The Biomedical & Traditional Healing Collaboration on HIV and AIDS is a funded project within the UKZN Nelson R Mandela School of Medicine. The development and empowerment of traditional healers to play a meaningful role in health care service delivery in South Africa is of national strategic importance.

This forms one of the strategic objectives of the Nelson R Mandela School of Medicine at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. The faculty has established strong relationship with traditional healers leading to the signing of a memorandum of understanding with traditional healers of KwaZulu Natal. The relationships are based on sound philosophical principles and have become a true model for partnerships in this country and continent; they will contribute to the development of traditional health care knowledge without compromising intellectual property rights of the healers.  

This has led to an award of funds by the CDC (US Presidents Emergency Fund) on biomedical and traditional healer collaboration on HIV prevention. Aids care and treatment. This five-year cutting edge project is focused on establishing a district/local government level collaboration with clinics and traditional healers. Partners of this project include the, KwaZulu Natal Department of Health, KwaZulu-Natal Traditional Health Practitioners, eThekwini Municipality Health Unit, and the UKZN’s Nelson R Mandela School of Medicine. The project centres around a training and implementation programme that has so far reached 1077 traditional health practitioners.