Groups to honor African AIDS activists

On May 29 the Association Francois-Xavier Bagnoud, Doctors of the World, and the Global Health Council will present the groups' 2003 Jonathan Mann Awards for Health and Human Rights to Zackie Achmat, cofounder of South Africa's Treatment Action Campaign, and Frenk Guni, former executive director of the Zimbabwe Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS. The awards, which include $20,000 in prize money, will be presented at a ceremony held in conjunction with GHC's 30th annual international meeting in Washington, D.C. "These outstanding advocates are being honored because they had the courage to demand from their governments a responsible public sector response to the devastating public health threat to southern Africa, the world's most AIDS-devastated region," said Nils Daulaire, GHC's president and CEO. The award is named for Jonathan Mann, MD, who was the first head of the World Health Organization's Global Programme on AIDS. Mann and his wife, Mary Clements-Mann, who was an AIDS vaccine researcher, were killed in the 1998 crash of Swissair Flight 111.