Ambassador Mark R. Dybul, a physician, serves as the United States’ global AIDS coordinator and carries out the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (known as PEPFAR).

The U.S. Agency for International Development is an independent federal government agency whose mission includes improving the health of citizens in foreign countries while advancing U.S. foreign policy goals. That includes family planning and HIV/AIDS. It frequently works with religious leaders in other countries.

Marilyn J. Keefe is deputy assistant secretary for population affairs in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and directs the Office of Population Affairs in Rockville, Md.

Shuja Shafi, a microbiologist at Northwick Park Hospital in Harrow, United Kingdom, is a co-author of the editorial, “Hajj and the Risk of Influenza,” and the letter, “Influenza Vaccine Uptake among British Muslims Attending Hajj, 2005 and 2006,” published in the British Medical Journal, Dec. 9, 2006.

Aziz Sheikh is professor of primary care research and development at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and a co-author of the editorial, “Hajj and the Risk of Influenza,” published Dec. 9, 2006, in the British Medical Journal.

Shiraz A. Malik is executive director of the Islamic Medical Association of North America in Lombard, Ill.

Read an April 23, 2006, Seed magazine article about health on the hajj.

Read “Rift Opens Among Evangelicals on AIDS Funding,” a Religion News Service story posted June 2, 2006, by Christianity Today.