Meena Seshu to Speak at the Vienna AIDS Conference Plenary

[Guest guest]

Meena Seshu to speak at the Vienna AIDS Conference Plenary

Meena Seshu to speak at the Vienna AIDS Conference, plenary session

and will deliver Mann Memorial Lecture on Thursday, 22nd July

Meena Saraswathi Seshu is General Secretary of Sampada Grameen Mahila Sanstha,

an organization based in Sangli, India, which has worked for the empowerment of

people in sex work, including mobilization for HIV-related peer education since

1991.

In 1996 this work broadened into the organization of a collective of women in

prostitution called VAMP (Veshya Anyay Mukti Parishad). Ms. Seshu has worked

with marginalized populations, particularly rural women, adolescents and people

in sex work, on HIV and AIDS, sexual and reproductive health, violence against

women, and gender and sexual minority rights through grassroots, rights-based

organizations in Karnataka and Maharashtra. She has more than 10 years

experience with global movements addressing violence against women and sex

workers' rights.

Mann Memorial Lecture

The Mann Memorial Lecture was inaugurated at the XIII International

AIDS Conference in Durban, South Africa. The lecture is sponsored and supported

by the Global Health Council.

The Mann Memorial Lecture honours the memory and legacy of one of the

key figures of the 20th century in the fight against global poverty and illness.

Mann (1947 - 1998) is best remembered for his extraordinary contributions as the

visionary physician and public health official who clearly articulated the

connection between poverty and ill-health.

A crusader against AIDS and a champion for human rights, Mann played a major

role in focusing public attention on the fact that prejudice and discrimination

were helping to drive and spread the epidemic.

Founder and the first head of the World Health Organization's Global Programme

on AIDS, and the first director of Harvard's François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for

Health and Human Rights, Mann believed that improved health couldn't be achieved

without basic human rights.

Mann and his wife, Lou Clements-Mann, herself a world-renowned

immunologist, were killed in the deadly crash of Swissair Flight 111 in

September 1998.

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