People
Renowned surgeon launches cardiac foundation for African children
April 18th, 2018 While many people of his age would be retired, world renowned heart surgeon Professor Rob Kinsley, 77, is still performing miracles on the operating table. The Sunday Independent reports that the doctor from Durban who pioneered paediatric...
Urologists make SA history with high-tech kidney stone removal
April 11th, 2018 South Africa's first-ever procedure to remove kidney stones using a needle was successfully performed by a team of urologists at Inkosi Albert Luthuli Central Hospital in KwaZulu Natal. IoL reports that known as mini percutaneous...
Australian Outback nurse self-treats heart attack
April 11th, 2018 What do you do if you're in the middle of nowhere and you have a heart attack? According to a Live Science report, if you're a nurse alone in Western Australia, apparently the answer is, save your own life, damn it. A case report tells the...
UK politician’s £240,000-a-year cancer-fighting skull cap
April 11th, 2018 Former UK Labour minister Dame Tessa Jowell is using a pioneering £240,000-a-year device to tackle her deadly brain cancer. According to a Daily Mail report, it takes the form of a “skull cap” carrying an array of electrodes that fire...
SA health activist awarded UCT's President of Convocation Medal
April 11th, 2018 South African community health activist, Dr Sophia Kisting-Cairncross, has been awarded the President of Convocation Medal at the University of Cape Town (UCT), reports Business Day. The medal is awarded annually by the president of convocation...
UCT paediatrician honoured by Unesco and L'Oreal
March 28th, 2018 Professor Heather Zar from the University of Cape Town and Red Cross Children’s Hospital has been honoured for eher work on pneumonia, tuberculosis and asthma. Annually for the past 20 years, the L’Oréal Foundation has recognised five...
Johannesburg paediatrician who crowdfunded chemo drug, dies
March 28th, 2018 Johannesburg paediatrician Kerryn Neilson‚ who raised more than R1m last month to help pay for a novel chemotherapy drug‚ has succumbed to blood cancer, reports The Times. On Friday morning of last week‚ Neilson's husband Sheldon broke the...
Brain response during controlled whole-body exposure
March 14th, 2018 Dutch adventurer Wim Hof is known as "The Iceman" after establishing several world records for prolonged resistance to cold exposure, an ability he attributes to a self-developed set of techniques of breathing and meditation, known as the Wim Hof...
First KZN-trained nuclear physician
February 14th, 2018 The first nuclear physician to have trained in KwaZulu-Natal‚ Dr Alphonse Msomi‚ plans to put his skills to good use in fighting cancer, reports The Times. "I could go to Gauteng or the Western Cape but there are already dozens and dozens of...
SA's youngest cardiologist unemployed and heads for Canada
January 31st, 2018 Unbelievable as it may sound, Dr Viwe Mtwesi (32), the country’s youngest cardiologist, is unemployed. This is according to a City Press report, which said that Mtwesi completed her cardiology training at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in...
Stellenbosch doctor's scientifically-founded photo-novel
December 20th, 2017 Dr Burt Davis, a lecturer at the Africa Centre for HIV/ Aids Management at Stellenbosch University, received his doctoral degree earlier this month after designing a scientifically-founded photo-novel that dealt with the health risks related to tik....
Free State nurse named the most caring in SA
December 20th, 2017 Angelina Vermeulen from the Free State was named the country's most caring nurse at the recent annual Marilyn Lahana Trust Caring Awards hosted by the Democratic Nursing Organisation of South African (Denosa). According to a Pretoria News...
How a historic heart transplant created SA's first celebrity scientist 50 years ago
December 6th, 2017 Fifty years ago – on 3 December 1967 – the heart of a 26-year-old road accident victim, Denise Darvall, started to beat inside the chest of a 54-year-old grocer, Louis Washkansky. South Africa’s Chris Barnard stands out in medical...
The extraordinary journey of Jimmy Volmink
November 22nd, 2017 Professor Jimmy Volmink, dean of medicine and health sciences at Stellenbosch University, South Africa and founding director of Cochrane South Africa joins Ray Moynihan at Cochrane Australia in his The Recommended Dose programme to trace an...
First black female neurosurgeon graduates at UKZN
November 22nd, 2017 The discipline of neurology in the School of Clinical Medicine at University of Kwazulu-Natal (UKZN) has announced that Dr Nomusa Shezi is the first black African woman to graduate in this field from the institution. The Citizen reports that...