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Wamkelekile, Welkom
Wamkelekile, Welkom
How UCT’s Garden Route teaching platform is transforming health sciences training
Every year since 2016, as part of a pilot teaching and learning programme, a small group of UCT Health Sciences students have spent the final year of their MBChB living and studying in the scenic Garden Route District located within South Africa’s Western Cape Province. Students and alumni agree that there are enormous benefits to being immersed in the community they serve.
30 Dec 2021
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Addressing the psychosocial needs of women facing adversity
The second year of the pandemic brought additional challenges, but more opportunities to respond to address the psychosocial needs of women living in adversity. The Perinatal Mental Health Project (PMHP), located within the Centre for Public Mental Health in the Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health celebrated a number of highlights during 2021.
30 Dec 2021
The new division of Interdisciplinary Palliative Care and Medicine
Over the past 20 years, the palliative medicine programmes at the University of Cape Town (UCT) have become an established and world-renowned palliative medicine teaching and research group, and the first postgraduate program in palliative medicine on the African continent. In 2021, the UCT Senate approved this unit becoming a stand-alone division, known as the Interdisciplinary Palliative Care and Medicine (IPCM) division. IPCM is ideally situated within the new clinical department of Family, Community and Emergency Care, emphasising the commitment of IPCM to ensure accessible evidence-based palliative care across the continuum of care.
30 Dec 2021
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UCT spearheading training and research for occupational lung disease in Southern Africa
The highest global pneumoconiosis mortality and disability rates are found in Southern Sub-Saharan Africa. Given this high disease burden, A/Prof Shahieda Adams, occupational medicine specialist in the Division of Occupational Medicine, and Dr Qonita Said-Hartley, consultant radiologist and Head of Clinical Unit of Radiology at Groote Schuur Hospital, spearheaded an interdisciplinary African collaboration to promote capacity for the detection of pneumoconiosis. They delivered a training programme on how to classify chest radiographs of workers with occupational lung disease according to the International Labour Organisation classification. The training was done under the auspices of NEPAD (New Partnership for Africa’s Development) and took place at the Occupational Health Centre of Excellence in Kitwe, Zambia.
30 Dec 2021
Reaching the unreachable with malaria treatment
A special permit now allows specially trained malaria programme staff to treat malaria cases, advancing malaria elimination efforts by reaching more of those infected and treating them earlier. This intervention has been led by Prof Karen Barnes, from the Division of Clinical Pharmacology and Founding Director of the UCT MRC Collaborating Centre for Optimising Antimalarial Therapy (CCOAT). She co-chairs the South African Malaria Elimination Committee.
30 Dec 2021
Collaboration to make disability more visible
Collaborating with both internal and external partners is vital in making disability more visible and creating an environment that is inclusive and transformative. Members of the Division of Disability Studies in the Department of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences have been working with partners to develop research capacity and academic leadership that will contribute to the understanding of disability in context, as an issue of social justice.
30 Dec 2021
Using the power of language and technology to open a window on economics
Translating over 1 000 economic terms into South Africa’s 11 official languages is at the heart of the EcoDoc app, recently launched within the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) School of Economics. The aim is to make it easier for economics students to understand terms and definitions in their home languages.
22 Dec 2021
MeerKAT discovers mystery clouds
An international team of astronomers led by Professor Gyula Józsa, Professor Michelle Cluver and Professor Thomas Jarrett from the Department of Astronomy at the University of Cape Town (UCT), has utilised the South African MeerKAT telescope to discover a mysterious chain of hydrogen gas clouds the size of a massive galaxy.
22 Dec 2021