The fight against HIV and AIDS in Africa was given a boost yesterday as Hart House hosted two leaders of the struggle against the disease from the University of Namibia.

Barnabas Otaala, a professor and the director of the University of Namibia’s Task Force on HIV/AIDS, and Dr. Scholastika Iipinge, the director of the Community Health Program in the Faculty of Medical and Health Science, collaborated with eight U of T students as part of an internship directed by professor Richard B. Lee in the faculty of anthropology.

The program, which began in 1996, has had 40 U of T students participate in a wide range of short-term research and training projects.

“HIV and AIDS needs to be addressed in a very holistic way and the students who have gone to Namibia show there is a way to do that,” said Lee.

Nadia O’Brien, Fotis Kanteras, Jing Jing Liu, Alex Teleki, Ilona Kosova, Nidhee Jadeja, Ayaana Jean-Baptiste, and Kate Rice were 2005’s interns.

“Our research will hopefully affect children,” said Kosova, “they are the backbone of the community, and helping children be physically and spiritually healthy is the most important thing we can do for the future.”

“The most inspiring for me was the individual stories behind the HIV/AIDS epidemic,” said Jadeja.

“It was profoundly positive and profoundly negative. It was really eye-opening. I got to put those negative experiences to use, making them meaningful and positive,” said Teleki. She said Prof. Otaala and Dr. Iipinge helped them to accomplish their goals.

“It is just gives me courage that there are people who care,” said Dr. Iipinge.

“When the interns come, they think they come to learn from us, but we learn from them, because they talk about real issues and add to the pool of knowledge around HIV/AIDS.”

“When U of T launched the program back in 2003, we wanted to ramp up the whole program by bringing in the people from Namibia,” said prof. Lee on the initiation of the Centre of International Health, which emerged that year and included the UNAM/U of T project, “The interns act as a catalytic force to our community,” Prof. Otaala pointed out, “our students then go out and do more.

“There is a jump of hope there.”

Dr. Iipinge articulated a scathing problem for poor nations undergoing the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

“Some richer countries have been actively recruiting our medical staff to go to their country. They go because they are tired of the conditions at home and think it will be better elsewhere.

“It is a monster of a problem we cannot really handle on our own. It is a global problem.”