Jonathan Jansen addresses South African AIDS epidemic in lecture at School of Public Health
Courtesy of Rebecca Kendall
Jonathan Jansen, vice chancellor of the University of the Free State in South Africa, was invited to campus by the UCLA Global Health Education Program to talk about how the politics of AIDS affects South African students as part of a monthly speaker series.
By Brendan Jackson
Feb. 7, 2012 1:27 a.m.
The South African AIDS epidemic was the focal point of a speech Monday at the UCLA School of Public Health.
Jonathan Jansen, the vice chancellor of the University of the Free State in South Africa, spoke to about 30 students and faculty researchers as part of the Global Health Lecture Series. The series invites a distinguished leader in the international community to lecture on a specific medical issue, said Stacey Yudin, global health education program coordinator at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine.
The series is in its second year and features a different speaker every month, Yudin said.
“I’m not here to lecture you about the science of AIDS,” Jansen said to start off the lecture. “I’m here to talk about the AIDS epidemic from the perspective of someone who works as a nexus between students and political leaders.”
In South Africa, a country with high illiteracy and poverty rates, an estimated 5.6 million people are living with HIV or AIDS, according to AVERT, an international AIDS research charity.
Jansen said one of the reasons why he came to speak was to create collaboration between his university and UCLA. He said that a partnership between the two universities could help promote a global solution to the AIDS epidemic.
“It’s important to make exchanges with students and faculty at UCLA and students and faculty in South Africa, so that we can execute a global solution to this global issue,” Jansen said.
In his speech, he highlighted political actions, Zulu tradition, high illiteracy rates and the patriarchal culture of South Africa as reasons for slow progress in curbing the AIDS epidemic.
Jansen said he has confronted sexual promiscuity and misogyny on his own university campus and has had difficulty in changing behaviors.
He has received continuous backlash from both students and politicians for his outspoken assertion that the AIDS issue is not a medical epidemic but a cultural epidemic.
To solve the epidemic, the issue has to be tackled from many different perspectives, Jansen said.
“We need to employ a multidisciplinary solution to deal with this complex issue,” Jansen added.
In his speech, Jansen also advocated for consistent public health messages and the importance of investing in the hope of the younger generation to solve the epidemic.
“We must give young men and women the belief that they can have personal educational success,” he said.
Following his presentation, Jansen opened the floor to a Q&A forum with the audience, in which they discussed the connection between the crisis at the University of the Free State in South Africa and universities here in the United States.
Deborah Mindry, a UCLA researcher and attendee of the event, said that people need to address the AIDS issue beyond a medical epidemic and view it as a cultural problem.
Mindry is originally from South Africa and started researching the anthropology of the AIDS epidemic in 1990. She began her research at the UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior in 2008.
“Often students are anxious to go abroad to immerse themselves in the hunt for a solution,” said Mindry.
“But students here can have just as great of an impact by holding our own politicians accountable to how they are dealing with this complex global issue.”
