Dr. Merle Sande, President of the Academic Alliance Foundation,
Rings The NASDAQ Stock Market Closing Bell

Tuesday, November 14, 2006
at NASDAQ's MarketSite
in New York City.

Academic Alliance Foundation

Dr. Merle Sande, President of the Academic Alliance Foundation, presides over the closing bell in honor of the annual A Celebration of Partnership Gala, a black-tie benefit to raise support for the AAF mission to reduce the global burden of infectious diseases by building health care capacity and strengthening academic medical institutions. The event will be held on the evening of November 14th in New York City.

This second annual gala is a milestone for AAF as well as an opportunity to honor President William Jefferson Clinton, a global leader whose vision and leadership inspire worldwide partnership around the common goal of HIV/AIDS care. Proceeds from A Celebration of Partnership Gala will support AAF's partnership with the Infectious Diseases Institute (IDI), a medical research, training, treatment and prevention institute in Kampala, Uganda.

AAF was born out of a unique private-public partnership between academicians of Africa and North America, the pharmaceutical industry and other organizations and institutions looking to unite in the fight against the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Their partnership became the Academic Alliance. They were convinced that a more collaborative, African-based and African-led approach would produce sustainable results. The paramount need was to strengthen and upgrade academic medical centers in sub-Saharan Africa, so they could educate and prepare a new generation of health care professionals, skilled in best practices to lead a resurgent effort against infectious disease. Such centers, modeled upon the best academic medical centers in the world, would pioneer new and improved therapies and prevention strategies, applicable to both rural and urban settings, while offering advanced treatment and care to those already afflicted.

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