Dear Colleagues and Students

It was with terrible sadness that we learnt last Wednesday that our dear colleague Dr Timo Xolani Freeth had taken his own life. Timo grew up in Cape Town and attended Westerford High School. He graduated with an MBChB from UCT in 2004. He was awarded the Isadore Jacob-Walz Prize for Family Medicine and Primary Health Care during his 4^th year of study. After graduating, he was affiliated with the UCT Department of Medicine for much of his career.

He did his internship at Tygerberg Hospital and then worked at Site B Khayelitsha Community Health Centre and GF Jooste Hospital. He was a medical registrar at UCT from 2009 to 2013, during which time he was awarded the Cardiology Stethoscope Prize for Most Deserving Junior Doctor in Cardiology in 2010 and he earned the recognition as a ‘Highly Commended Teacher’ from Professor Vanessa Burch for his clinical teaching of medical students in 2011.

Most recently he worked in the Groote Schuur Hospital Geriatric Clinic as a sessional medical officer (from 2017) and as a Clinical Lecturer in the Ambucare Clinic teaching Internal Medicine to 4th and 6th year MBChB students (from 2018). He was a highly valued member of the Undergraduate Education Hub team in the Department of Medicine, making important contributions to our teaching curriculum and programme redesign as well as student assessment methods.

He will be remembered as a caring clinician with a vast knowledge of Internal Medicine. He would read up about the conditions of the patients he had seen that day each evening. He was an enthusiastic and compassionate teacher of medical students with whom he shared his knowledge generously. More importantly he modelled by example what it is to be a caring clinician with a holistic approach to the patient encounter and taught the values of social justice, equity and inclusion. He was a committed activist for these values and challenged the persistent inequality and exclusions that characterise our society. He was never at ease in an unjust society. For Timo, there was value in every human being and each human encounter, and he had little regard for distinctions based on social class. He reached out across the divides created in our society by colonialism and apartheid. His isiXhosa name Xolani (meaning “peace be with you” in English) was integral to his self-identity and values. Timo spoke openly about his mental health struggles and was an advocate for improved support for people living with mental illness.

Timo’s impacts as a teacher will live on as positive ripples of influence in the next generation of doctors. These are a few comments that MBChB students shared about his teaching at the conclusion of their Ambucare rotations recently:

Dr Freeth was incredibly knowledgeable and working with him was such a great experience. I really hope we get more clinical education from him.

Dr Freeth was so patient and provided a lot of context and practical approaches.

I really was inspired by Dr Freeth and his empathic manner with patients, I took a lot of pointers there.

Dr Freeth is the most empathetic doctor I’ve ever met. Such an amazing teacher too.

Dr Freeth – a great teacher and he created gentle learning environment. 

Regarding his work in the Geriatric Clinic his colleague wrote:

“Timo had been interested in geriatric medicine since his time as a medical registrar. This interest, I think, reflected his concern for the vulnerable and marginalised in society, including older people. His consultations with patients were long and thorough. Apart from his efficient management of their presenting medical problems, he took a special interest in the psychosocial aspects of their illness, something with which he could easily empathise. He was consistently kind, considerate and compassionate to patients, their caregivers and families, and to his medical and nursing colleagues alike. He seemed to be motivated by a profound desire to alleviate suffering and to improve the quality of human life.”

Timo had a rich creative life outside of medicine, captured by one of his lifelong friends and colleagues as such:

“Timo was a naturally gifted actor, who brought the house down all through high school, and battled to choose between two very different careers of acting and medicine. He joined a full-time theatre group for a couple of years after school, before starting his MBChB. He had a great appreciation and love for music, especially for original, local and experimental genres, and produced his own solo album 'The curious in between'. He also had a stint as 'DJ counter current' playing Observatory club gigs on his off weekends as a medical registrar! Timo also had a passion for reading and writing poetry. While at times all this creative gifting and energy was in tension with the cerebral and all-consuming nature of Internal Medicine, it ultimately made him a remarkably balanced, rooted and empathetic clinician.”

Timo will be fondly remembered.

We share our heartfelt condolence with Timo’s family: his partner Brenda, his children Buhle 26, Khulani 23, Thandile 14, Avethandwa 14, Qiniso 10, Nqobile 9, his mother Jilly, his father John and his sister Rebecca. We have reached out to offer our support to them at this tragic time of loss.

The funeral service and thanksgiving for Timo’s life will take place on 25 September 2023. Further details will be communicated by the Department of Medicine.

Sincerely

The UCT Department of Medicine