DUSHANBE, August 17, Asia-Plus – An annual competition to promote recipients for the Jonathan Mann Awards 2007 in Central Asia has started in Central Asia’s states.  

Representatives from government bodies, local non-government organizations and media dealing with problems of preventing HIV/AIDS may take part in the contest.  

Based on UN Theme Group submissions and recommendations recipients are selected as prize winners for their significant contributions in the area of HIV/AIDS, including raising HIV/AIDS awareness among population and combating stigma and discrimination of people living with HIV/AIDS. 

The Jonathan Mann Awards in Central Asia were established in 1999 and since that time, separate Tajik civil servants and public associations, including Republican AIDS-Prevention Center, NGOs DINA and Volunteer have been selected as recipients for the Jonathan Mann Awards.  Last year, central hospital of the Ministry of Defense (MoD) was selected as recipient for the Jonathan Mann Awards in Central Asia.     

The UN Theme Group on HIV/AIDS will sum up the results of the competition and awards ceremony for winners will be held on December 1.  

As the first director of the World Health Organization''s Special Program on AIDS from 1986-1990, Dr. Mann pioneered the approach to AIDS that continues to shape public health policy today.  As the François-Xavier Bagnoud Professor of Health and Human Rights at Harvard University from 1990-1997, Dr. Mann began to articulate the ways in which the health of individuals and populations reflects access to basic human rights, using as his warrant his years as a public health practitioner and strategist and as his text the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Despite his untimely death in a 1998 plane crash, Jonathan Mann is considered by many to be one of the most important figures in the 20th century fight against global poverty, illness and social injustice.