June 15 was the last day Kathryn "KT" Thiessen '91/99 was scheduled for work as a nurse practitioner with Wichita physician Donna Sweet '70/72 at the University of Kansas School of Medicine's Midtown Clinic.
Thiessen, who has worked with Dr. Sweet for the past nine years, has experience attending to all kinds of patients, including those who are HIV-positive and those who have AIDS. Among her many duties was serving as a member of Sweet’s outreach team that every four to six weeks makes the rounds of HIV/AIDS clinics in Kansas.
In 2004, for instance, Thiessen and the team flew from Wichita to Salina to Garden City and back to Wichita. That day, they were booked to see some 60 HIV-positive patients.
Beginning this summer and for the next year, her outreach will be wider ranging. She will be working through the Clinton Foundation’s HIV/AIDS Initiative in Maseru, the capital of Lesotho, a tiny, poor country surrounded by South Africa. Some 300,000 of Lesotho’s 1.8 million people are HIV-positive. The Clinton Foundation assists developing nations with the implementation of large-scale treatment and prevention programs.
This is Thiessen’s third trip to Africa. She spent three months in Lesotho volunteering with the Clinton Foundation in 2006; her first trip was a two-week visit to South Africa in 2004.
