Category: Spring 2009

Though dinner with President Festus Mogae was one of the highlights of the 2008 Friends Trip to Botswana, several travelers cited the small meetings with participants in the Botswana-Harvard Partnership’s (BHP) clinical trials as the most valuable experience.

Ireen Kiwelu is a Fogarty Fellow conducting research in the Essex Lab at the Harvard School of Public Health. Born in Moshi, Tanzania, at the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro, she was educated in Tanzania, Denmark, England and Norway. She returned to her hometown to work as a Senior Research Scientist at the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center. She recently spoke with Spotlight Editor, Martha Henry.

“Study Cites Toll of AIDS Policy in South Africa” was the front-page headline of The New York Times on November 25th. “A new study by Harvard researchers estimates that the South African government would have prevented the premature deaths of 365,000 people earlier this decade if it had provided antiretroviral drugs to AIDS patients and widely administered drugs to help prevent pregnant women from infecting their babies.”