As a paediatrician I specialised in childhood diseases of the gastrointestinal tract. I obtained a doctorate for a study of infants presenting to the Red Cross Children’s Hospital in Cape Town with acute diarrhoea. In the introductory chapter of my thesis, I quoted the researchers Rohde and Northrup (1975) who stated that, “the incidence of diarrhoea is more closely related to socioeconomic conditions than to climate, to poverty rather than place.” At that time (1981-1982) diarrhoea in infants was an annual summer epidemic in Cape Town located largely amongst the black and coloured communities of the Cape Flats. In recent times the frequency of the disease amongst children from these…
-
-
Walking the Road of Healthcare in South Africa now available!
My book is now available a little earlier than expected on the link below. Your comments are very welcome! https://publisher.co.za/product/walking-the-road-of-healthcare-in-south-africa-my-40-year-journey/
-
Quality … the Holy Grail often sought but never found?
I have just finished reading “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” for, I think, the third or fourth time. The book, subtitled, “An Inquiry into Values”, has little to do the motorcycle maintenance other than in an allegorical sense but rather explores the journey of the author Robert Pirsig in pursuit of understanding the meaning of “Quality” against the background of a two week motorcycle trip across America from Minneapolis to San Francisco. The author of this unique book and best seller over the last forty years was committed to a mental institution earlier in his life, probably with a form of catatonic schizophrenia and subjected to electro-convulsive therapy…
-
COVID-19 and Corruption
On 23rd July 2020 I wrote an unknowingly prophetic piece on the Cancer of Corruption in Health. In that I used examples of corruption in the health sector that I had encountered in the past. In doing so, I had no idea that the cancer that I had described and which I concluded could be excised by good and honest leadership had progressed to such an advanced stage in South African society. At a time of crisis, with the country threatened on many fronts by an unprecedented pandemic, one would have assumed that even the most hardened criminal would have hesitated to steal the scarce resources needed to save the…
-
What is advice? … in the context of COVID-19
The challenges faced by countries and their governments to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic are formidable and in many countries there has been conflict and disagreement between the government of the day i.e. politicians and the experts i.e scientists and researchers. The United States is a glaring example of this scenario at its worst. There has even been conflict between public health experts and epidemiologists on the validity of various strategies to contain the spread of the virus with probably the most well documented example being that between the expert advice given to governments in the United Kingdom and Sweden. As in most things in life the final verdict on…
-
The time is now for change!
I trust also that the reader will agree that given my background, which I will elaborate on elsewhere on this website, I have no desire to make political capital out of any comments in this regard. So what is my assessment of the position South Africa finds itself after 100 plus days of varying degrees of “lockdown”? As I write Gauteng has for the first time the greatest number of positive COVID-19 coronavirus tests in any province as well as having the largest number of active case of any province. This is a trajectory that is closely followed by the Eastern Cape. The Western Cape long designated as the “epicentre” of the…
-
Winter of discontent …
I live in Cape Town where the last few days have been cold and windswept … bleak or bucolic could be other adjectives to describe the weather but also the psyche of the nation. We have lived through over 100 days of varying restrictions euphemistically termed “Alert levels” determined by a Command Council of politicians, we are again subject to power outages euphemistically terms “Load shedding” rather than power failures defined according to various “levels” of severity, today it is level 2 and finally here in the Western Cape while the rains pours down there are water restrictions at “level 3”. It seems to me we are a country of…