Prof Sithombo Maqungo presented his UCT Inaugural Lecture titled, Been there, fixed that, presented there and published that. Is this all there is to the life of an academic trauma surgeon?
Professor Sithombo Maqungo will be taking us through his experiences from the many hats he simultaneously wears; GSH trauma surgeon, UCT academic and fierce advocate for injury prevention.
Prof Sudesh Sivarasu's UCT Inaugural lecture, titled "Engineering Tomorrow’s Medical Devices for Africa's Unique Needs" explores the pioneering frontiers of biomedical engineering tailored to Africa’s distinct healthcare landscape.
As the DSI/NRF South African Research Chair in Biomedical Engineering & Innovation, Prof Sivarasu will address the challenges and opportunities presented in developing healthcare technologies specifically suited for low-resource environments in Africa.
The UCT Inaugural Lecture presented by Prof Catherine Orrell, titled "Toward effective HIV treatment in South Africa – injustice, clinical pharmacology and adherence", shares her experience and involvement as a clinical pharmacologist in the development of new antiretroviral treatment and treatment strategies over the past 20 years; as well as her fascination with adherence: why people do or do not take their life-saving daily medication.
On 25 July 2024, Professor Rudzani Muloiwa presented his UCT Inaugural Lecture, titled: "Human One, can these bones live?” - Thirsting for the Well-being of the Afrikan Child in a World of Becoming. 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.
Prof Susan Cleary delivered her UCT Inaugural Lecture, titled "Bending the arc towards health equity."
In her inaugural lecture, she reflects on the academic and policy contributions that she has made in this terrain, touching on key successes in the early days of HIV-treatment and ongoing challenges in the areas of universal health coverage and National Health Insurance. She concludes with a vision towards health equity for the second half of her career.
During his UCT Inaugural Lecture titled, "Hearing the Call - Trading Epistemic Curiosity for Contextual Relevance in Audiology", Prof Lebogang Ramma shares his experience regarding the challenges of trying to balance a research agenda informed mainly by academic interests versus the responsibility of generating basic knowledge that helps advance the field of audiology in South Africa and beyond.
He reflects on his research, teaching and social responsiveness work in relation to his area of interest: acquired hearing loss. He will also provide insight into his efforts to support the initiation and development of training programmes for audiologists in Africa.
"We are here too - Contributing African Strep A research towards eliminating Rheumatic Heart Disease"
On 3 August 2023, Prof Mark Engel presented his inaugural lecture chronicling his life and life's work on rheumatic heart disease (RHD). Despite being largely unseen in developed countries, RHD remains rampant in poorer communities and low-resourced settings around the world. Strep A, the bacteria responsible for the antecedent sore throat infection believed to initiate the immune processes involved in RHD development, is largely unresearched in Africa.
Starting out as a laboratory scientist, Engel later was a Harvard University fellow in Public Health in 2001, before pursuing a career in epidemiology. He joined University of Cape Town in 2007, eventually being awarded his PhD in 2013 for a large longitudinal study on the epidemiology of RHD in children, in Cape Town.
Based at the Cape Heart Institute and Department of Medicine, UCT, Engel also teaches health research methods while supervising postgraduate students.
Prof Kirsty Donald presented her inaugural lecture on Wednesday, 10 May 2023. Donald is deputy director of the UCT Neuroscience Institute and for the past 15 years she has headed the Division of Developmental Paediatrics at the Red Cross Children’s War Memorial Hospital.
Her lecture titled: “Context matters: Risk and resilience in early childhood brain development”, focused on her research work on the African continent that looks at when and how early life exposures and experiences impact on the brain’s development.
Prof Elizabeth Mayne is a specialist haematologist and immunopathologist, and Head of Division of Immunology in the Department of Pathology, with a special interest in the interface between communicable diseases and non-communicable diseases.
Her inaugural lecture is titled: "Racing the Red Queen - Immunology underlies all disease processes as well as the most successful treatment interventions of all time".
This inaugural lecture presented by Prof Romy Parker is titled “Pain management to reduce suffering in South Africa: integrating interdisciplinary research into the healthcare professions”.
Parker leads a dynamic and diverse team in the Department of Anaesthesia and Perioperative Medicine. She takes the audience on a reflective journey – exploring the phenomenon of pain, asking how it affects us, and what we have learnt about pain in South Africa. She will also address how to ensure that every South African has access to a healthcare professional who understands pain.
Prof Salome Maswime is the Head of the Global Surgery Division; an Obstetrician and Gynaecologist, and chair of the University of the Future Project at the University of Cape Town.
Her inaugural lecture is titled, "From caesarean section-related complications to global surgical systems strengthening." Caesarean sections are the most widely performed surgery in the world, yet African women are fifty times more likely to die from caesarean section complications, than women in high-income countries.
Prof Edina Sinanovic, a professor of Health Economics, Head of the Health Economics Division, and Acting Director of the Health Economics Unit at the School of Public Health, presented her inaugural lecture, titled, "Getting the most out of life – Understanding the opportunity cost of your decisions".
She reflects on her life and career to date focused on providing policy makers with the economic evidence they need to maximise the use of limited resources. She outlines the critical role of economic evaluation in health priority setting, and the work she has done in this area, especially in relation to tuberculosis interventions and the HPV vaccine.
Prof Lydia Cairncross presented her inaugural lecture titled, "From Endocrine Surgery to Access to Care - the Imperative for Health Equity Action in Academic Medicine". The lecture describes the complex intersection between the pressures of delivering a surgical service in a health system under threat, and the pursuit of formal academic medicine.
Cairncross is the Head of Department of Surgery at the University of Cape Town/Groote Schuur Hospital Academic Complex.
Prof Michael Held serves as a consultant in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at Groote Schuur Hospital. His primary focus lies in addressing local orthopaedic healthcare challenges by pursuing lean innovation and improving education and training in Orthopaedic surgery.
His inaugural lecture, titled "Right Down to the Bone - Orthopaedic Training and Education", explores the intricacies of UCT's orthopaedic curriculum transformation process for medical students.
A calendar of inaugural lectures for 2025 will be made available soon.