Zackie Achmat, Frenk Guni To Receive 2003 Jonathan Mann Award for Health and Human Rights
The Association Francois-Xavier Bagnoud, Doctors of the World and the Global Health Council later this month in Washington, D.C., will present the 2003 Jonathan Mann Award for Health and Human Rights to Zackie Achmat, co-founder of South Africa's Treatment Action Campaign, and Dr. Frenk Guni, former executive director of the Zimbabwe Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS, according to a GHC release. The awards, which include $20,000 in prize money, will be presented at GHC's 30th annual international meeting on May 29. GHC President and CEO Nils Daulaire, said, "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," adding, "Both are compelling voices for advancing the global response to AIDS treatment as a matter of basic rights." Achmat, who will not be able to attend the ceremony, said, "This recognition is for all Africans living with HIV and AIDS," adding that he plans to donate the award money to TAC's treatment fund. Guni, who was voluntarily expatriated in 2001 due to his opposition to President Robert Mugabe's treatment of the epidemic, is currently being treated for lymphoma and HIV in the United States. The award is named for Dr. Jonathan Mann, who was the first head of the World Health Organization's Global Programme on AIDS and subsequently founded Harvard University's Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights. Mann and his wife Mary Clements-Mann, who was an AIDS vaccine researcher, were killed in the 1998 crash of Swissair Flight 111 (GHC release, 5/16).
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