Woman scientist to empower women
WORLD Health Day, celebrated today, is held annually to mark the anniversary of the founding of the World Health Organization (WHO), and to draw attention to health issues concerning people all over the world.
It is a global campaign, inviting everyone from global leaders to the public in all countries, to focus on a single health challenge with global impact.
The theme this year “My health, my right” was chosen to champion the right of everyone, everywhere to have access to quality health services, education, and information, as well as safe drinking water, clean air, good nutrition, quality housing, decent working and environmental conditions, and freedom from discrimination.
Focusing on new and emerging health issues, World Health Day provides an opportunity to start collective action to protect people’s health and well-being.
In light of World Health Day, the National Science and Technology Forum celebrated Professor Salome Maswime, who won their Clinician-scientist Award last year – the Science Oscars of SA.
The award was sponsored and initiated by the South African Medical Research Council.
Maswime has been a pioneer in the field of global surgery in Africa as part of a drive for greater equity. She also drives measures to reduce maternal mortality from Caesarean sections in SA.
She is devoted to ensuring safe medical care for all women. Early in her career, Maswime lost a patient to anaesthetic complications, because she and her team did not have the skills to help. She stated: “These are skills that can be taught to medical officers and junior doctors — you don’t need to be a specialist.”
Maswime heads the Division of Global Surgery at UCT. It is one of the founding institutions to develop global surgery research and education in Africa.
She defines global surgery as an amalgam of many health disciplines to enhance the capacity of healthcare professionals to best serve the needs of their patients in a timely fashion. Her work, finding measures to reduce maternal mortality from CS in SA, led her to become one of the pioneers of global surgery in the country.
A major milestone for her, was an opportunity to participate in a meeting with the WHO. It was at this point where Maswime realised that there was still plenty of work to be done in medicine, starting with specifically understanding patients and being fully engaged with them.
She said: “It’s one thing to operate on a woman with cervical cancer, to remove the uterus and to do all the major things. But has anyone stopped to ask patients, ‘How much do you know about pap smears?’ or ‘Do you do pap smears routinely?’
“Even within the hospital space, there’s a lot of things that we can do to improve the flow of work and to make our services accessible to people”.