Noerine Kaleeba

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

Background 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.

TASO In June 1986, Kaleeba received a call that her husband, Christopher, had become very sick while he was in England working on his master's in sociology and political science. He was diagnosed with AIDS. He died in January 1987, which caused Kaleeba to co-found a support group that same year, The AIDS Support Organization (TASO). Based on the concept of "positive living", TASO was one of the 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.

She 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 Doctor of Humane Letters, Honorius Causa, in 2000

Kaleeba has served on various national and international bodies, including:

The World Health Organization Global Commission on HIV/AIDS The Global AIDS Policy Coalition The Uganda AIDS Commission Chairperson for Action Aid International (2009)

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 an account of how HIV/AIDS enteredo her life, and how she came to be on the front lines fighting the disease.