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Nelson Mandela

Quotable Quotes
"AIDS is no longer just a disease, it is a human rights issue." - Nelson Mandela, at the first 46664 concert held at Greenpoint Stadium, Cape Town (29 November 2003). "By all accounts, we are dealing with the greatest health crisis in human history. By all measures, we have failed in our quest to contain and treat this scourge."— Nelson Mandela talking about the HIV/AIDS pandemic, at the opening of the Second International AIDS Society (IAS) Conference on HIV Pathogenesis and Treatment (July 14, 2003). "The more we lack the courage and the will to act, the more we condemn to death our brothers and sisters, our children and our grandchildren. When the history of our times is written, will we be remembered as the generation that turned our backs in a moment of a global crisis or will it be recorded that we did the right thing?"— Nelson Mandela, at 46664 Arctic, in Tromso, Norway (11 June 2004). "AIDS today in Africa is claiming more lives than the sum total of all wars, famines and floods and the ravages of such deadly diseases as malaria ... We must act now for the sake of the world."— Nelson Mandela, in a closing address at the 14th International AIDS Conference in Barcelona, Spain, 2002.
Former South African President Nelson Mandela has been instrumental in raising global awareness of HIV/AIDS. During his presidency (1994 – 1999) he was relatively quiet on the HIV/AIDS front, but he has since become a global voice in the fight against the epidemic. His most prominent contribution is probably through 46664, the music-led HIV/AIDS awareness campaign named after his prison number during his imprisonment on Robben Island. Mandela has financed various HIV/AIDS projects through the Nelson Mandela Foundation and Nelson Mandela Children's Fund — ranging from scientific surveys to programmes for AIDS orphans. On January 6, 2005, Mandela announced that his last surviving son, Makgatho Mandela, had died of an AIDS-related illness. “Let us give publicity to HIV/AIDS and not hide it, because the only way of making it appear to be a normal illness, just like TB [tuberculosis], like cancer, is always to come out and say somebody has died because of HIV,” Mandela said shortly after his son's death in an article published on CBS News Worldwide. His most notable HIV/AIDS speeches include the closing addresses at the 13th and 14th AIDS conferences in Durban, South Africa, in 2000, and in Barcelona, Spain, in 2002.
Also see:
  • Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC) profile.
  • Closing address at the 13th International AIDS Conference in Durban, 2000.
  • Closing remarks at the 14th International AIDS Conference in Barcelona, Spain, 2002 .
Wits Journalism Anova Health

The project is jointly managed by the Anova Health Institute and the Journalism and Media Studies Programme at the University of the Witwatersrand, and supported by the Health Communication Partnership based at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Centre for Communication Programmes and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS relief through the United States Agency for International Development under terms of Award No. JH/HESA-02-05.

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