Professor honoured for health care
PROFESSOR Morgan Chetty, the head of the KZN Doctors Healthcare Coalition, has been recognised internationally for his contribution to health care in Durban.
Last Saturday, the 76-year-old doctor from uMhlanga received a Lifetime Achievement Award at Zenith Global Health’s Africa Healthcare Awards and Summit in Lusaka, Zambia.
According to its website, Zenith Global Health is a company established for shared learning, training and mentoring. The awards recognise, showcase and celebrate health care professionals who have excelled in their area of speciality through management, patient care, education, research and innovation.
Chetty, who provided free co-ordinated medical support to thousands of Covid-19 patients during the pandemic, said the award was unexpected and an honour.
“This was recognition for my contribution to health care in South Africa and throughout the Health Federation in Africa as well as some of the work I do for the International Society for Quality in Healthcare.
“I accepted this award on behalf of a team of colleagues who worked with me on projects of which the objective was delivering quality and safe care to as many people as possible. It was our way of increasing access to health care.”
Chetty has a MBChB from the University of KwaZulu-Natal and other medical qualifications locally and from the US.
After graduating in 1971, Chetty did his internship at King Edward VIII Hospital. He then started a general practice in Phoenix in 1978.
“In 1987, I acquired a property and licence to build the Phoenix Hospital. This was the only hospital that served the residents of the North Coast. The nearest hospitals were St Aidan’s and Addington. I worked with a few doctors to bring about a 24-hour service as there were no other referral services in Phoenix
and Mount Edgecombe.”
Chetty said he always felt he had a calling to help the sick.
“After I received the Humphrey Fullbright scholarship to the US in 1994, to study for my Master’s in public health at Tulane University in New Orleans, I had a vision.
“The vision was to serve the people and work with many like-minded colleagues to provide accessible care to patients. This was in fact the beginning of what could be described as a platform in health to allow access to all people within the resources available to us.”
In 1998, he co-ordinated the fund-raising to establish the first democratic doctors’ organisation, the South African Managed Care Organisation. Its aim is to bring doctors together – to be cost-efficient, be custodians of scarce resources, and deliver holistic quality care.
Chetty was elected vice-chairperson and he still holds that position.
He was also instrumental in setting up Mount Edgecombe Hospital, one of the first black-owned hospitals, post-apartheid.
Then, identifying the need to bring together ethically-divided health-care practitioners, he co-led a team to establish an umbrella organisation, the Independent Practitioner Association of South Africa.
“This was a turning point as the country saw doctors unite for the common purpose of caring for patients, managing scarce resources and striving for quality outcomes.”
Chetty is also the chairperson of the Independent Practitioners Association (IPA) and of the IPA in KZN.
“This is the largest group of family doctors in South Africa.”
In 2018, he was appointed by the minister of health to the National Health Insurance GP contracting committee and to the board of the Office of Health Standards Compliance.
He is also on the board of the Africa Health Federation.
Chetty was recently awarded the Discovery Healthcare Lifetime Achievement Award.
He also has a lifetime membership to the International Academy of Quality and Safety, and has received the Dr Humphrey Zokufa Titanium Lifetime Achievement Award for his contribution to the health care industry.
Last year, Chetty was awarded the Lex Visser Lifetime Award for his work in health care.