Tributes pour out for acclaimed medical pioneer Bongani Mayosi



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At the time of his death, Mayosi was Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Cape Town (UCT), a position he held in 2016 after a dozen years. years at the head of his department of medicine. There, he had to face the competing demands of research, clinical practice and administration in an institution still marked by the demonstrations of the movement Fees Must Fall, which launched in 2015 a violent national campaign to demand a free higher education. [19659002StudentdemonstrationssparkedapastexodusofUCTacademicstoequipthemsofarTheMinistryofCommercehasbeenbusywithstudentregistrantsin2016andhashadseveralmonthsofworkduetothelackofwork

. His family issued a statement shortly after his death on Friday, saying that Mayosi was battling depression. Salim Abdool Karim, co-director of the Center for AIDS Research Center in South Africa, notes that the prevalence of suicide among doctors worldwide is extremely high. Karim, who had known Mayosi for almost 20 years, recently attended a 35-year meeting for his promotion in medicine. He was struck, he said, by the number of their peers who had committed suicide. Mayosi studied medicine at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and won a prestigious fellowship at the University of Oxford, where he studied the genetics that underlie cardiovascular risk factors. He returned to SA in 2001 to hold a position at UCT and Groote Schuur and, in 2009, he received the presidential order of Mapungubwe for his contribution to medicine.

Energetic, warm and charismatic, Mayosi studied rare heart disease. developed country, but common in developing countries – rheumatic heart disease, tuberculous pericarditis and idiopathic cardiomyopathy.

His most influential work was a groundbreaking study of tuberculous pericarditis, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2014, which showed that Combat Corticosteroids have tripled the risk of cancer in HIV-positive patients.

Tuberculotic pericarditis affects about 10% of TB patients, many of whom also have HIV. It causes fluid buildup and compression of the heart and kills a quarter of patients who catch it. The study on the management of pericarditis, which included patients in eight African countries, changed the way the disease is treated and had an immediate impact in countries with high rates of HIV.

Mayosi also helped to identify a new gene responsible for sudden death syndrome, which causes cardiac arrest in healthy athletes and youth, and has conducted research that has highlighted the neglect of heart disease rheumatic diseases in many of the most affected countries. Rheumatic heart disease is triggered by untreated rheumatic fever, which is caused by strep A infection. A simple course of antibiotics can stop it in its pathways.

He was deeply committed to training the next generation of clinician-scientists, and supported the Department of Health's drive to create 1,000 new doctorates in 10 years. He was held in high esteem by the Minister of Health, who appointed him to head a special task force to probe issues at the Health Professionals Council of SA in 2015.

Tributes Government, academics and the medical profession These past few days underscore his multiple contributions to SA, says South African Medical Association vice president Mark Sonderup, a hepatologist at UCT

Mayosi is survived by his wife, UTC Nonhlanhla Khumalo, professor of dermatology and their two daughters. ] [email protected]

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