Re-energizing HIV Counselling and Testing at Howard College Campus

Mr Benjamin Bearnot.

It has been a wonderful experience for Mr Benjamin Bearnot, a final-year medical student at New York University who received a Fulbright-Fogarty fellowship in Public Health and spent nine months committed to HIV and AIDS programmes at UKZN.

In January of this year, with guidance from his Fulbright-Fogarty fellowship mentors Professor Quarraisha Abdool Karim and Dr Ayesha Kharsany from the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA), Bearnot established a collaborative relationship with UKZN's HIV/AIDS Programme.

Through this partnership, together with Ms Nomonde Magantolo, the HIV /AIDS Programme co-ordinator, Bearnot assisted staff in the HIV/AIDS Programme with programmatic evaluation and employing innovative ways to increase HIV testing uptake on UKZN's flagship Howard College campus

Bearnot argues: While HIV prevalence has been shown to be lower in the tertiary education sector than in the wider community, universities are in the vanguard of South African society and serve important roles in the education and protection of future African leaders, executives, and scholars.

Bearnot said he has been very lucky to work at Caprisa doing clinical research and at the HIV/AIDS Support Unit doing service delivery. 'The people I have worked with are very bright and hard working.'

erika van pelt pat robertson hunger games trailer hunger games trailer in plain sight hunger games movie review bats