Angelina Jolie Joins Fight for Cambodian AIDS Victims VIDEO

Angelina Jolie Joins Fight for Cambodian AIDS Victims
The Maddox Chivan Children's Center Provides Relief to Children Impacted by HIV

Two superstars -- one a world-famous actress and one a world-renowned scientist -- have teamed up to bring aid to vulnerable children around the world.

Oscar winner Angelina Jolie and Harvard researcher Dr. Anne Goldfeld, who co-directs the Global Health Committee, turned a chance meeting into an opportunity to help Cambodian children stricken with HIV and tuberculosis live full, healthy lives.

The two women met while flying into Cambodia in 2004, where Jolie was filming the hit "Tomb Raider" sequel and Goldfeld was returning to provide medical aid to children in need. The conversation the two struck up led to Jolie lending her support and funding for a center to bolster Goldfeld's efforts.

"There, sitting next to me, was Angelina Jolie and Maddox, her son," Goldfeld said of that fateful flight. "I think I was so jet-lagged that I had the temerity to say, 'You're Angelina Jolie, aren't you?'"

Once they arrived in Cambodia, Goldfeld ended up taking Jolie to the dilapidated hospital where she was treating adults and children wasting away from diseases like AIDS and its common co-infection, tuberculosis.

Goldfeld, a professor at Harvard's Immune Disease Institute, also told Jolie that children with AIDS in Cambodia often don't get the care they need to survive, and are often stigmatized and cast out.

This story is part of ABC News' "Be the Change: Save a Life" initiative, a year-long series of broadcast and digital coverage focusing on global health issues. For more onTB in Cambodia, watch "World News" Sunday at 6:30 p.m. ET. Click here for complete coverage and information on how you can personally make a difference.

According to current estimates, approximately 14,000 Cambodian children are infected with HIV, and mother-to-child transmission of AIDS is one of the major causes of new infections.

After her visit to the hospital, Jolie decided to partner with Goldfeld on a new project to bring relief to Cambodian children. The result is The Maddox Chivan Children's Center, named for Jolie's Cambodian-born adopted son. The daycare facility for children afflicted by and affected by HIV opened in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh in February 2006.