A strategic battle against HIV/AIDS
Dr. Bohdan Nosyk, cell phone clasped to one ear, impatiently waits outside the Comox Street entranceway to Vancouver’s St. Paul’s Hospital. After a brief greeting, we pivot through the glass doors into the mustard-grey hallway and stride down the hall to the aged elevator. As a code blue alert crackles robotically over the intercom, the sluggish lift jolts upwards to the sixth floor where Nosyk’s office is located at the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS (BC-CfE). With its glass walls and blond wood, the centre is an airy and welcome contrast to the grim hospital corridors.
This morning, Nosyk has managed to clear 20 minutes of his day to discuss the $3 million St. Paul’s Hospital CANFAR chair in HIV/AIDS Research that he was awarded earlier this year (SFU and St. Paul’s Hospital Foundation are equal co-funders). “I’m honoured and excited about what we may be able to accomplish in HIV/AIDS in the coming decade,” says Nosyk. The appointment has added to Nosyk’s already extraordinary workload, which includes an associate professorship in SFU’s Faculty of Health Sciences. The hydra heads of media, academia, and research are proving challenging. Add to this an increasingly assertive two-year-old daughter – still mad at Dad for putting her to bed early the night before – and Nosyk is feeling a bit like a Cirque du Soleil juggler.
Nosyk’s office, on the east side of St. Paul’s, is half a city block away through the labyrinth of hallways to Providence building’s 10th floor, where AIDS patients receive treatment. It is the well-being of such individuals that is ever foremost in Nosyk’s mind – their need is the catalyst for his research and work. He doesn’t visit with the patients; as a health economist, Nosyk’s work requires “a degree of separation,” he says.
“The nature of the work calls for dispassionate decisions that really shouldn’t be influenced by personal references or relationships, but should rather reflect the best interests of the population as a whole,” says Nosyk, as square and broad shouldered as an Olympic wrestler, with thick dark brown hair and startling green eyes.
Roberta Staley
SFU
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