Neurologist beats all the odds to realise his dream
He fought poverty, language barrier
Growing up in the rural town of Bizana in the Eastern Cape, Simphiwe Mandlesilo always wanted to be a doctor, and against all the odds he realised his dream.
The 37-year-old neurologist at Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital in Soweto said the few resources he had did not deter him from achieving his goal.
“I always dreamt of being a doctor, but I was not sure of how it was going to happen, all I had was a dream to help people. I fell in love with neurology when I first studied the nervous system during my high school years.
“Neurology is a rare speciality with few doctors in South Africa, and there are even fewer black neurologists. I knew that giving my all to my school work was the only way I was going to be able to achieve my dreams,” he said.
He said his good marks earned him a bursary from the Eastern Cape department of health to study medicine.
“Someone at my church made me aware of the Cuban/RSA scholarship. I applied and by God’s grace and my good academic records, I was accepted. I was only 17 years old when I left for Cuba in 2000 where I stayed for seven years. Being in a foreign country was not easy, especially because I had to study medicine in Spanish,” he said.
He said it was the generosity of Cuban people who made him feel at home. When he came back in 2007, he studied for another two years at the University of Cape Town.
“It was not easy because I had been taught in Spanish and for the [first] time I was going to learn medicine in English. I failed my first exam, but that did not deter me from pushing towards the realisation of my dream. I only qualified as a doctor in 2009 and I still had to do two years of inservice training and another year of community service.
“After that the problem was getting a spot where I wanted to practice as a neurologist. It was only in 2015 when I started working as a neurologist. It has not been an easy road, but it was through determination and hard work that I managed to qualify as a neurologist.”
Mandlesilo said he loves seeing patients walk out of the hospital on their own with a smile after being admitted paralysed. He recalled how one mother brought her teenager with uncontrollable epilepsy. “It’s something that makes neurology a nice speciality,” he said.
Mandlesilo said there are cases where they do all the investigations and still could not get an answer.
“Dealing with conditions where you know there is no treatment of a line motor neuron disease becomes really a sad situation,” he said.
Mandlesilo is also the author of Confessions of a Pastor’s Kid which he wrote while he was still in Cuba. “My parents were pastors, so when I grew up I experienced a lot of problems and poverty as a result of them accepting the call of God.
“I decided to write a book detailing all my experiences and challenges growing up as a pastor’s kid,” he said.
‘‘ Neurology is a rare speciality with very few doctors in South Africa