Cardiff Uni academic helps teenagers with HIV comic
An academic at Cardiff University is using the unusual medium of the comic book to help teenagers in South Africa come to terms with HIV.
Dr Lisa El Refaie, in the university's School of English, Communication and Philosophy, got together with South African health education charity Whizzkids United (WKU) to organise a workshop where teenagers made their own comic strips highlighting their experiences of living with HIV.
"I suggested WKU might run workshops on how to draw comics, as a way to encourage the teenagers to explore and express their own experiences and feelings, and create educational messages relevant to other young people in their community," Dr El Refaie said.
"The results were remarkable, with the teenagers telling some extremely moving stories for the first time."
There are more than 5.5m people living with HIV/AIDS in South Africa - around 460,000 are children aged 0-14.