Atholl Kleinhans

Mr. Atholl Kleinhans is a Lecturer in global (public) health and health systems and policy at Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University in South Africa. He has more than twenty years of experience in health settings mainly in South Africa and brings an in-depth knowledge of HIV/AIDS, gender and sexuality. 

He joined the AIDS response in the early days (2000) during the peak of the pandemic in South Africa. In 2012/13, he completed a master’s degree in science with specialisation in Global Health at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. As part of the programme, he completed a six-month elective course at Thammasat University in Thailand, where he learnt about the Thai culture and gained valuable experience in the Thai healthcare system. The dissertation project for the M.Sc. degree afforded him the opportunity to conduct a project in Serbia, Novi Sad, where he analysed the Serbian National HIV/AIDS policy among key populations including commercial sex workers, intravenous drug users and the LGBTIQ+ communities. 

Mr. Kleinhans is currently reading towards a Ph.D. degree in Health Sciences, a cortutelle degree between the University of Stirling in Scotland and Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University. His thesis project focusses on the lived experiences of LGBTIQ+ students in the health professions in a historically black health sciences university in South Africa. He is currently a senior global fellow at the Atlantic Institute based at Tekano in South Africa.