A warm welcome to Prof Rudzani Muloiwa as the new Head of Department for Paediatric and Child Health from 1 November 2020. I wish him everything of the best and look forward to his contributions to our leadership team. He replaces Prof Andrew Argent who has made an immeasurable contribution to the leadership in the Faculty over the last period.

Rudzani was born and raised in the region now known as Limpopo. After doing his undergraduate MBChB degree at the University of (KwaZulu) Natal, Rudzani trained as a paediatrician at the Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital and the University of Cape Town (UCT), obtaining a Fellowship in Paediatrics with the Colleges of Medicines of South Africa (CMSA) in 2004. After this he completed an M.Sc. (Public Health Developing Countries) at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). His PhD is currently under examination. He has an interest in infectious diseases with a special emphasis on vaccine preventable diseases. 
 
He currently runs the Paediatric and Adolescent HIV Clinical Services at Groote Schuur Hospital. He is a member of the Vaccines for Africa Initiative (VACFA) which is located within the School of Public Health & Family Medicine at UCT. Since 2017 Rudzani has served as a member of the South African National Immunization Technical Advisory Group (NITAG) consisting of multidisciplinary groups of experts responsible for providing information to national governments that is used to make evidence-based decisions regarding vaccine and immunization policy. He is also  a steering committee member of the Global Pertussis Initiative (GPI). He serves as the Deputy Chair of the Board of World Vision South Africa.

We wish Rudzani well in his new role, and look forward to him taking the department and Faculty into new spaces of growth and development.

Associate Professor Lionel Green-Thompson
Dean: Faculty of Health Sciences