Noerine Kaleeba

Noerine Kaleeba trained & 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 worked as a physiotherapist at Mulago Hospital, and was the principal of Mulago School of Physiotherapy until 1987.

In 1987, Noerine and 15 other colleagues co-founded what later became “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, and was then elected Patron of the TASO movement, a role she still plays.

Noerine Kaleeba also worked 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 from January 1996.

She has been awarded several international awards in recognition of her national and global anti-AIDS efforts, 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 Marie Stopes International, Noah’s Ark (Sweden), and was Vice-Chair of ActionAid.

Noerine Kaleeba has also written and co-authored several books on HIV and AIDS. She is retired and lives in Mukono, in Uganda.