Another first for pioneering professor
PROFESSOR Jamila K Adam, pictured, of the Biomedical and Clinical Technology Department at the Durban University of Technology (DUT), recently became part of a small number of women in South Africa to achieve the status of full professor.
The former associate professor has become the first full professor at the Faculty of Health Sciences at the institution. However, this is not the first accolade for this dynamic mother of four. She has also been the first in South Africa to obtain her doctoral degree in Clinical Technology in 2005.
During her inaugural lecture at DUT in August this year, aimed at celebrating her ascension and achievements as a scientist, the Registrar, Professor Thenjiwe Meyiwa, congratulated and welcomed Adam in joining the minority of full female professors in South Africa.
“I am honoured to be part of this 17 percent. It’s a fantastic and humbling achievement,” said Adam, whose career at DUT spans more than three decades.
She said her goal of helping the sick motivated her to do research in areas of clinical intervention, immunology, microbiology, histology, toxicology, applied physiology and nutrition.
In an interview at her office at the ML Sultan campus (DUT) last week, it became obvious that Adam was passionate about her work, research and supervising future scientists.
Research
The 16-time research award-winner, who is married to Professor Ahmed Sadeq Adam, deputy vicechancellor at the Richfield Graduate Institute of Technology, spoke of some of the in-depth research she had undertaken over the years.
For her research into lactose intolerance among Indians and Africans in (then) Natal, she obtained her masters degree in Medical Science at the University of Natal in 1992.
Patients were recruited from two hospitals: RK Khan and King Edward VIII. Healthy volunteers included staff and students from the ML Sultan Technikon.
Malnourished patients were fed nutritional supplements to gain weight, but this proved ineffective.
From her studies, Adam ascertained that 90% of Zulu speaking Africans and 83% of Indians were in fact lactose intolerant.
“Lactose intolerance was also observed to be primary in origin, since there was no association between intolerance and sickness or malnutrition,” she said.
Adam advised that milkbased diets should be avoided in re-feeding malnourished Zulu speaking patients and that lactose might find a place in the treatment of constipation and liver failure in such patients.
Asked what her current research entailed, she said: “The first is in the use of external counterpulsation in the treatment of cardiac complications in patients. It is known as a ‘natural heart bypass’ and it has relieved patients’ cardiac pains.”
Therapy
External counterpulsation therapy, she said, was a safe, non-invasive treatment that delivered great clinical benefits to patients with chronic angina. The mechanical process of external counterpulsation therapy enhanced the body’s natural circulatory process and ultimately restored sufficient blood flow to parts of the heart that lacked oxygen.
Treatments last one hour each, and 35 are given.
Adam’s current research focusses on non-invasive diagnostic assessment with the use of the first three-dimensional vasculo-graphy machine in Africa.
“This assessment covers kidney, lung and cardiac function. It is used for early detection and can measure a patient’s risk factors of having a heart attack. It shows fullcolour, three-dimensional pictures of the heart and indicates the amount of reduction in blood flow to the heart.
It measures up to 64 different parameters in the body, and is the only noninvasive diagnostic assessment available in the world that can establish early detection of coronary artery disease.”
Asked what motivated her to continue research at a time in her career when she should unwind, she said: “It’s because I am passionate about research and I will continue as long as I can.”
She said her goals for graduates at her department included for them to be recognised as leading clinical and biomedical technologists, for them to have high expertise in clinical and biomedical research in their specific specialist fields, and for them to provide patients with excellent care and treatment.
Adam, who resides in Overport, Durban, has four sons whom she dotes on.
They are Rayhaan, 39, a chartered accountant and businessman, Waseem, 30, a cardiac technologist in private practice, Irfaan, 28, an anaesthetist, and Nadeem, 27, an accountant.
She has one grandchild.