Meet our researchers

“I think a lot of us have seen the epidemic through a relative (a brother, a sister, a cousin, etc.). So it’s no longer a question of saying, ‘So and so is [HIV positive]. My family is immune, I’m immune.’ People have started seeing it next to themselves. So I think the stigma is beginning to wane [and] we’ve reached a place where the epidemic is almost reaching a plateau now in South Africa.”

- Dr. Baningi Mkhize,
Principal Investigator,
Microbicide Trials Network

Baningi Mkhize, MBChB, DOH
Principal Investigator,
Microbicide Trials Network

The son of a domestic servant and housewife, Baningi Mkhize grew up in rural KwaZulu Natal (KZN). “I’m a KZN boy. I speak isiZulu.” Growing up, the expectation was for Mkhize to finish his studies in grade eight so he could begin contributing to the family. But a young teacher, Eric Mkhize—who has remained a close family friend, took an interest in Mkhize and convinced his parents to send him to high school. Further encouraged by his Matric classmates to apply to university, Mkhize found himself a year later, on scholarship, studying medicine at the University of KwaZulu Natal. “Everyone was saying, ‘Hey man you’ve got good marks, top of the class, you should go somewhere.’ So I applied to the places where you did not need a deposit, since I could not afford it. Then I was accepted at medical school. So it’s my classmates who pushed me to be here.”

After qualifying as a doctor in 1987, Mkhize moved from KZN to Johannesburg. “I wanted to see a different place because I had grown up in KZN, studied in KZN, and I wanted someplace different—and to learn a different language.” After working as a general practitioner in his own private practice and then in the public sector in Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Mkhize decided to try his hand at research. Originally joining PHRU in 2006 as an investigator in the Phambili HIV vaccine clinical trial, he worked on a number of HIV prevention clinical trials. “The best thing is the challenge. You’re embarking on something that you really don’t know if it’s going to work or not, and you’re working with prior evidence, hope and faith saying, ‘I think this is going to work’. So it’s that expectation—what’s going to happen—that’s the most challenging part about this field.” During his years in Johannesburg, Mkhize has also managed to learn a new language, SeTswana, thanks to his wife—a nurse he met while completing his internship.

Today, Dr. Mkhize serves as the Principal Investigator and Clinical Research Site Leader for the Microbicides Trials Network at PHRU, currently conducting the VOICE (Vaginal and Oral Interventions to Control the Epidemic) study. Speaking about the possibility the VOICE study promises, Dr. Mkhize reveals, “The main thing for me is [finding] something that the women can have control over without depending on the men. If a woman decides to take a pill as a pre-exposure prophylaxis, nobody is going to say no. If she wants to take a vaginal gel, she can take a vaginal gel and she’s got control. I think it’s a well-known fact, especially in Africa, that women do not have much power in terms of sexual relations. So that’s what’s exciting for me about this study—at least the women will have something they can have control over…if it’s successful.”


Affiliations
Clinical Research Site Leader, Microbicides Trials Network

Education
MBChB, University of Natal, South Africa
Advanced Certificate in Applied Management, University of Potchefstroom, South Africa
DOH, University of the Free State, South Africa