Noerine Kaleeba

Noerine Kaleeba is a Ugandan physiotherapist and educator. She is the co-founder of the Aids activism group "The AIDS Support Organization" (TASO). She is currently a programme development adviser for the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

Noerine Kaleeba specialised in orthopaedics, physiotherapy and community rehabilitation at Makerere University in Kampala, and the Robert Jones & Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic & District Hospital in Oswestry, England. She has worked as a physiotherapist at Mulago Hospital, and was the principal of Mulago School of Physiotherapy until 1987.

In 1987, Kaleeba and 15 other colleagues, most of whom have died of AIDS, set up a support group which became the organization, "The AIDS Support Organization" (TASO), to provide care, support and counselling, and to mobilize communities and neighbourhood care for people with HIV/AIDS and their families. Based on the concept of "positive living", TASO was one of the very first community responses to AIDS in Africa and is today one of the leading examples in AIDS care and support and community education for prevention in resource-limited settings. Kaleeba worked as the Executive Director of TASO Uganda for eight years until 1995 when she retired, and was elected Patron of the TASO movement, a role she still plays. Kaleeba currently works as a programme development adviser, Africa, for the "Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS" (UNAIDS), and has been based at their secretariat in Geneva since January 1996.

Kaleeba has been awarded several international awards in recognition of her national and global anti-AIDS efforts, including The Belgian International King Baudouin Prize for Development, awarded to TASO in 1995, and Doctor of Humane Letters, Honorius Causa, in 2000. She has served on various national and international bodies, including the World Health Organization Global Commission on HIV/AIDS, the Global AIDS Policy Coalition and the Uganda AIDS Commission. She has been a trustee of international NGO boards such as Maristopes International, Noah's Ark (Sweden), and is currently Vice-Chair of ActionAid.

Her book, "We Miss You All: AIDS In The Family" is a touching account of how HIV/AIDS came into her life, and how she came to be on the front lines fighting the disease.