UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima said:
“The life of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II was one of continuous public service.
Queen Elizabeth II was a great friend of the United Nations and spoke very movingly of its work and its values, including in her famous address to the UN General Assembly in 1957.
Queen Elizabeth II was dedicated to ending AIDS and to ending stigma for people living with HIV. Her visit, during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Uganda in 2007, to Mildmay hospital at which she met with people living with HIV and their families, helped to challenge stigma and to affirm the dignity and rights of all people living with HIV. It helped also to make strengthening the HIV response, centred on the inclusion and rights of communities affected by HIV, core to the agenda of the Commonwealth.
May her example inspire us all. I express my profound condolences to her family, and to the government and people of the United Kingdom and of the countries of the Commonwealth of Nations.”
UNAIDS
The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) leads and inspires the world to achieve its shared vision of zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination and zero AIDS-related deaths. UNAIDS unites the efforts of 11 UN organizations—UNHCR, UNICEF, WFP, UNDP, UNFPA, UNODC, UN Women, ILO, UNESCO, WHO and the World Bank—and works closely with global and national partners towards ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030 as part of the Sustainable Development Goals. Learn more at unaids.org and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
