From 8 to 12 July the Africa Centre hosted the first winter school for our PgDip students since 2006. While February’s summer school focuses on orientating students for the year ahead, the winter school provides a valuable opportunity to take stock – both of how the students are doing and how we can adapt and improve the presentation of the programme. The most important part of the winter school is the introductions to the second semester modules presented by the internal and external lecturers.
The first module is about prevention and care, and three of our expert lecturers took the podium to introduce the various study units.
Strategies for prevention – Dr Juliet Nyasulu, SU Division of Health Systems and Public Health
Juliet – who has over 20 years’ experience working as an HIV programme manager, health systems technical advisor and health systems researcher – explored HIV prevention strategies through multiple lenses, including:
- Epidemiology
- History (prevention strategies over the decades)
- The biomedical, behavioural and structural elements of prevention
- Access to care and retention
As the principal investigator of a South Africa-Malawi study on access to health service during public health pandemics such as Covid-19, Juliet is well-positioned to provide insights on strengthening health systems to build resilience.
Mental health and wellness – Michelle Munro, manager of the HIV, gender and sexualities portfolio of SU’s Equality Unit
The key message from Michelle’s session was that mental health and emotional wellbeing are as important as physical health and that workplaces need to acknowledge this. She provided students with an overview of the multiple aspects of mental health: understanding mental health and emotional wellbeing, recognising stressors and symptoms of poor mental health, implementing strategies to improve mental health and combat stigma and discrimination, and the importance of mental health and wellbeing being included as a central part of HIV programming in the workplace.
Since charity starts at home, Michelle also reminded students to apply the same principles and insights to their personal lives, for example striving for a work-life balance and finding ways to reduce stress.
Therapeutic management/pharmacovigilance – Dr Rory Leisegang, Paediatric Centre of Excellence, Ireland
Understanding how best to provide care to HIV positive people and to assess the care provided is a crucial factor in making the end of the HIV/Aids epidemic a reality. Rory introduced students to the key concepts relating to the assessment of patient and provider factors, as well as some examples of differentiated service delivery. Delving into the detail of pharmacovigilance, Rory explained the importance of medication safety to treatment, the scope of the problem of pharmacovigilance, and the current methods of carrying out pharmacovigilance as it pertains to HIV/Aids treatment, including antiretroviral therapy side effects or adverse medication reactions.
Click on the respective links to view summaries of the second and third modules.