Glenda Gray on rolling out vaccine in SA
Professor Glenda Gray chats to YOU about her part in securing the Johnson & Johnson vaccine for SA
SHE’S forgotten what it’s like to have a weekend. Or how it feels to be able to spend time with her family without her phone ringing and some medical expert wanting to pick her brain.
For almost a year Professor Glenda Gray’s every waking hour has been consumed by one thing: using research to help South Africa escape the clutches of the Covid pandemic.
And her colleagues say we should all be grateful for the sacrifices she’s made – because if it wasn’t for her, SA’s vaccination plans might have totally stalled.
There was all-round celebration in January when we secured 1,5 million doses of the Oxford/ AstraZeneca vaccine. But after it came to light that the vaccine wasn’t effective for the South African variant of the disease, the government pulled the plug on the rollout.
It was a devastating setback but just when it looked hopeless, Glenda, who’s president of the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC), saved the day by helping to secure 500 000 doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
When she contacted the pharmaceutical company’s bosses they were all ears. After all, it was largely thanks to her efforts that South Africa joined the Johnson & Johnson vaccine trial last year.
At one stage the company was reportedly considering not including South Africa as it looked like the disease was on the wane here – but Glenda, who is lead researcher in the trial, persuaded Johnson & Johnson to keep it going.
And by doing so, they were able to gather valuable evidence of how the vaccine was coping against the new variant, showing that it’s around 85% effective in preventing death and severe illness and 57% effective in preventing moderate illness.
Having played a crucial role in gathering vital data, Glenda was well placed to call in a favour.
And she was standing by at OR Tambo airport last month when the first batch of vaccines arrived in the country. The batch was transported to Cape Town the very next day, where she waited on the tarmac for the plane to arrive.
From there it was a mad dash in an ambulance to Khayelitsha District Hospital so she could be present to witness President Cyril Ramaphosa and healthcare workers getting their shots as SA became the first country in the world to allow early access to the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
And what about Glenda? Surely after all the effort she put in she deserves a shot in the arm as well as a hearty pat on the back?
By the time we catch up with her via Zoom, the 58-year-old professor has had her jab – but for her the real satisfaction was seeing the relief on the faces of healthcare workers as they were lining up to get the game-changing vaccine.
“I think we’ve underestimated how much of an impact Covid-19 has had on healthcare workers,” she says. “They’ve seen Covid from the eye of the storm.”
THIS isn’t the first time she’s been at the frontline helping when South Africa’s fighting a health crisis. In the 1990s, as a medical doctor and researcher, she took on the government for its refusal to acknowledge that HIV causes Aids.
And now during the pandemic she’s been one of the most critical voices on the government’s lockdown strategy.
“It’s almost as if someone is sucking regulations out of their thumb and implementing rubbish,” she complained last year.
At the time she was a member of a high-profile medical panel tasked with advising ministers on how to handle the crisis but after her comments she was shuffled out of the position.
Yet this proved to be a blessing in disguise as it gave her time to focus on South Africa’s participation in the Johnson & Johnson study.
Glenda credits her upbringing for instilling a keen sense of dedication. Born in Boksburg, on the East Rand, the fifth of six children, she says her preacher mom and her dad, a mine engineer who died when she was 16, encouraged her to fight for her beliefs.
“We come from a modest background, but my parents were big on investing in education and so we’re a very hard-working family. I’ve got siblings who have PhDs and nieces who are doctors,” Glenda says.
Within her family she’s known as eccentric and a bit of a maverick. “But they know my heart is in the right place and they’re very supportive,” she says.
After qualifying as a doctor at Wits University in the mid-1980s, she worked in paediatrics at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital.
But as the HIV/Aids epidemic erupted and she saw mothers and their babies dying, she felt compelled to join the fight.
In 2000 she was awarded the Nelson Mandela Health and Human Rights
Award for her pioneering work in the field of mother-to-child HIV transmission. And since then the accolades have flooded in. She was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world in 2017 as well as Forbes Africa’s Top 50 most influential women in Africa in 2020.
For the past seven years she’s served as head of the SAMRC, which she describes as “the best job in the country”.
“The SAMRC gets to fund and conduct research that changes the lives of South Africans. So how amazing it is to lead an organisation whose job is to try to help make people’s lives better.”
IN BETWEEN all this, Cape Town-based Glenda is a doting single mom of two daughters in their 20s and a son in matric. She prefers not to name her kids to protect their privacy. “We’re very close and they’re very supportive. They look after me and make sure I get fed,” Glenda jokes. So what does a professor who works 14 hours a day do to switch off? “I spend a lot of time walking on my treadmill, listening to Bob Dylan. “I also enjoy walking on the beach with my kids or taking the dogs to Rondebosch Common when I get the chance. And obviously a glass of wine helps,” she says. Glenda is now trying to get fit for a hike in Namibia in August. “Apparently it’s a gruelling hike and so I started off [with training] very well but then my exercise fell by the wayside because of this rollout. But it’s my aim to be able to do this walk and hopefully I can.” Now that SA has succeeded in securing a vaccine, her attention will shift to figuring out the logistics of effectively administering it. “It’s going to consume us for the rest of the year,” she says. “South Africa has to be successful in this and we have to do whatever we can to help,” Glenda says. And with that, it’s time for the prof to get back to work – South Africans are counting on her to help get vaccines onto planes and into arms. That’s the only way we’re going to beat this virus.
‘They know my heart is in the right place’