Top broadcasters join forces with UN on HIV/AIDS prevention

Bulletin of the World Health Organization, March, 2004 by Fiona Fleck

Twenty of the world's most powerful broadcasters and media conglomerates joined forces with humanitarian agencies to fight HIV/AIDS in a new initiative which UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, said had the potential to save "as many, if not more, lives than physicians."

"In the world of AIDS, silence is death," Annan told broadcasters at a meeting in New York on 15 January to launch the Global Media AIDS Initiative.

The initiative--the first of its kind to be launched by the UN--is financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and run jointly with the Kaiser Family Foundation, a US nonprofit group that has been working with health agencies and media groups addressing the HIV/AIDS epidemic for more than a decade. The project aims to find ways in which the...