A Dangerous Question, the Answers Bring Hope
Research with tea workers sheds light on AIDS impact in Africa
Click on the image above to watch full-screen videos of BU researchers in Kenya.
From western Kenya and tea fields that surround a small town called Kericho come stories that explore complicated global health issues: how AIDS has devastated communities, how new treatments have brought people back from the brink, and whether employers — for bottom-line business reasons as well as humanitarian concerns — should invest in that treatment.
Researchers from the Boston University School of Public Health’s Center for Global Health and Development have been in Kenya exploring these issues for a decade. To do the work, the BU group had to understand the unique culture of tea plantations. They had to get to know Kericho, a small town that is tea country’s vital commercial center. They had to work closely with doctors and administrators in Kenyan hospitals. And they had to develop unique ways of tracking how AIDS has affected workers who toil in the fields. The videos above, from the current issue of Bostonia, chronicle their research efforts and offer glimpses of life in Kenyan tea country.
An in-depth written account of BU’s involvement in Kenya appears in the Winter-Spring 2010 Bostonia.
Additional video editing by Anna Horowitz-Gelb.
Seth Rolbein can be reached at srolbein@bu.edu. Devin Hahn can be reached at dhahn@bu.edu.
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