FED:UN has brush with AFL in Melb

AAP General News (Australia)
08-29-2010
FED:UN has brush with AFL in Melb

By Cathy Alexander

MELBOURNE, Aug 29 AAP - The biggest UN event to be held in this country has had a distinctly
Aussie curtain-raiser - a brush with the AFL.

More than 1400 delegates from around the world have gathered for a three-day UN conference
on improving health, which opens in Melbourne on Monday.

AFL players got into the spirit by raising awareness about the conference - and about
the health challenges the world faces - at the Melbourne vs North Melbourne clash at the
MCG on Sunday afternoon.

Melbourne president Jim Stynes urged football fans to think globally and compassionately.

"We can do a lot for the community and that is something as a football club we have
decided to do, something to help others who are less fortunate," Stynes, who is battling
an aggressive form of cancer, told reporters before the match.

"This gives us an opportunity to align ourselves to what is happening here with the
UN and what is happening globally."

Stynes took to the middle of the field before the first bounce to brief the crowd on
the conference.

He also presented the UN's public information chief, Kiyo Akasaka, with his own Melbourne
jersey, as staff from World Vision spread the message through the crowd.

The annual conference is specifically for non-governmental organisations and is usually
held at UN headquarters in New York, but this year it's come to the Melbourne Convention
and Exhibition Centre.

The focus of the conference is on achieving the Millennium Development Goals which
the UN agreed to in 2000, with a focus on reducing maternal and infant deaths, and preventing
the spread of HIV AIDs and malaria.

UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon will address the opening of the conference via video
link on Monday morning.

AAP ca/jhp

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