Interest in Public Health
The pursuit of a satisfying and meaningful career is my ultimate goal and a master of public health degree is a stepping stone along the path to a future career. For me, it is also a responsibility I owe to myself.
My university education exposed me to a number of public health issues. While at university, I was affiliated to an anti AIDS club whose increased emphasis was placed on behavioural change to prevent the risk of STDs, HIV/AIDS and unplanned pregnancies. I particularly joined this club so I could make an impact on fellow students and prevent the spread of the virus as I had lost a lot of my close relations to HIV/AIDS. It was from this point that my interest in public health arose. During my fifth year of university education, I proposed to conduct a research on the role of physiotherapy in patients HIV/AIDS patients but could not conduct the named research due to funding difficulties and ethics issues.
Nevertheless, I still picked on another public health topic 'the prevalence of complaints of arm, neck and shoulder among office workers who use computers' and I earned myself an award as the best graduating student in Research. The findings of the study further prompted me to make a difference and prevent preventable illnesses, thus considered public health research as a career.
My work experience as a physiotherapist is within the field of public health and has developed my disease identification, treatment and to a lesser extent preventive skills. I am currently engaged in community (outreach)programmes for HIV/AIDS patients. My role in this activity, is to identify and mobilise patients who are on Anti retro virus drugs who have residual effects (weak limbs) of ARVs and other people in the community who might actually need physiotherapy services. Though this integration of physiotherapy services with HIV/AIDS activities at the hospital is still in its infancy stage, as a department we have achieved an increase of 30% in the number of patients
My university education exposed me to a number of public health issues. While at university, I was affiliated to an anti AIDS club whose increased emphasis was placed on behavioural change to prevent the risk of STDs, HIV/AIDS and unplanned pregnancies. I particularly joined this club so I could make an impact on fellow students and prevent the spread of the virus as I had lost a lot of my close relations to HIV/AIDS. It was from this point that my interest in public health arose. During my fifth year of university education, I proposed to conduct a research on the role of physiotherapy in patients HIV/AIDS patients but could not conduct the named research due to funding difficulties and ethics issues.
Nevertheless, I still picked on another public health topic 'the prevalence of complaints of arm, neck and shoulder among office workers who use computers' and I earned myself an award as the best graduating student in Research. The findings of the study further prompted me to make a difference and prevent preventable illnesses, thus considered public health research as a career.
My work experience as a physiotherapist is within the field of public health and has developed my disease identification, treatment and to a lesser extent preventive skills. I am currently engaged in community (outreach)programmes for HIV/AIDS patients. My role in this activity, is to identify and mobilise patients who are on Anti retro virus drugs who have residual effects (weak limbs) of ARVs and other people in the community who might actually need physiotherapy services. Though this integration of physiotherapy services with HIV/AIDS activities at the hospital is still in its infancy stage, as a department we have achieved an increase of 30% in the number of patients