People
SA-born doctor is the world’s richest
Patrick Soon-Shiong, the son of Chinese immigrants to South Africa, is the world's richest doctor and the wealthiest resident of Los Angeles with a net worth of almost R150bn.
Soon-Shiong grew up 'coloured' in Port Elizabeth finished high school when he was 16 and received his medical degree from the University of the Witwatersrand at 23, finishing fourth out of 189 graduates. He moved to Canada, then to the US, after doing an internship at the then all-white Johannesburg General Hospital where he was paid half the salary of everyone else.UKZN Aids man receives Nkrumah Award
Professor Salim Abdool Karim, director of the Centre for the Aids Programme of Research in South Africa (Caprisa) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and professor of epidemiology at Columbia University in New York, has received Africa's most prestigious award for science, the $100,000 (R1.1m) Kwame Nkrumah Award.
The award was handed over to Karim at the African Union general assembly in Addis Ababa by the chair of the AU commission, Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma.Wits prof at Ebola vaccine vanguard
South African vaccinologist Professor Helen Rees of the University of the Witwatersrand, is at the vanguard of the global search to find an effective Ebola vaccine and chaired a recent meeting of international experts trying to fast-track the development of three promising vaccines.