On September 14, 2009, at the offices of UNAIDS in Geneva (Switzerland), Dr. Paul DE LAY, Deputy Executive Director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and Dr. Jacques SANABRIA, Secretary General of the International Committee of Military Medicine, signed a Memorandum of Understanding aiming to facilitate contacts and cooperation between these two organizations.

At 16:30, Dr. Paul DE LAY met the ICMM delegation and introduced his colleagues:
- Dr. Leo KENNY, Team Leader of UNAIDS Security and Humanitarian Response,
- Dr. Nertila TAVANXHI, Technical Officer.

Dr. Jacques SANABRIA, Secretary General of the ICMM, then introduced his accompanying delegation:
- Major General Andre PASTUREL M.D., Director of International Relations,
- M. Paul ZABOURI, Director of Communication.

UNAIDS aims to sharpen the focus of its human and financial resources to have the most effective impact on the response to the HIV epidemic.
This goal may be reached by the following actions:
- to implement negotiated and unified management of technical support for an appropriate response in the fight against AIDS,
- to collect strategic information on the quality of programs in order to improve their implementation based on results,
- to design results-based programs to enable governing bodies to adapt their legislation and, eventually, their healthcare policy,
- to set up monitoring systems to ensure mutual accountability and deliver results,
- to support the efforts of the ten Cosponsor organizations in order to maximize the impact of their actions within countries to promote universal access to care.

The main role of the ICMM is to maintain relations between the different military medical services of its Member States in order to promote medico-military scientific activities and in addition to participate in the development of medical activities during humanitarian operations.

For the ICMM, the prevention of HIV infection among uniformed personnel is a priority. This involves discussing information, sharing lessons learned from the field and reciprocal representation in meetings with other organizations. AIDS remains one of the major public health concerns for health services supporting uniformed personnel.

Therefore the Memorandum of Understanding, signed on September 14, fits naturally into the policies of the two organizations. It provides for:
- reciprocal representation, with each organization inviting the other to attend its meetings as an observer, whenever questions of common concern may be addressed. Reports on the meetings will also be made available to the other party;
- sharing information and documentation
- cooperation, with the agreement that UNAIDS and the ICMM will collaborate and consult with each other about all matters of common interest regarding HIV and AIDS.

The signing ceremony ended at 17h30.

Dr. Nertila TAVANXHI then escorted the delegation of the ICMM.