The University of Cape Town invites you to an inaugural lecture by Professor Rudzani Muloiwa.

Date: Thursday, 25 July 2024

Time: 17:30 SAST

Venue: Neuroscience Institute Auditorium, E-floor, Groote Schuur Hospital/ Online via MS Teams

Topic:
"Human One, can these bones live? – Thirsting for the Well-being of the Afrikan Child in a World of Becoming”

Countries in Afrika have some of the worst child well-being indicators in the world. If this situation is allowed to persist, the foreseeable future of the continent is bleak indeed. Does it matter? In this lecture, Rudzani suggests that perhaps it should. Taking a critical systems heuristics approach, the lecture proposes an imperative for cultivating courageous ways of seeing; ways that carry hope for creating contextually appropriate communal responses to the challenges of envisioning and creating an Afrikan future in which children can live and thrive.

About our speaker:
Rudzani Muloiwa is Professor and Head of Department of Paediatrics & Child Health at the University of Cape Town, and the Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital. He is also the co-director of the Vaccines for Africa Initiative (VACFA) which is located in the Faculty of Health Sciences. He has an interest in the epidemiology of infectious diseases with an emphasis on those that are vaccine preventable, a topic on which his doctoral work was based. Rudzani serves as a member of the South African National Immunisation Technical Advisory Group (NAGI) – and the Regional Immunisation Technical Advisory Group (RITAG) for the World Health Organisation’s region for Africa. What keeps him awake at night is the issue of equitable access to what would make it possible for children in Afrika to live life to the full.