New head for UKZN department

PROFESSOR Refiloe Masekela is looking forward to her new position as the new Head of the Department of Paediatrics and Child Health at UKZN’s College of Health Sciences.

Masekela said this was an exciting opportunity for her to join the UKZN community and there was a lot of room for growth and progress.

“I hope to provide strong leadership and growth in the department,” she said.

Masekela said she has a threefold vision for her department in order to increase research outputs. She plans to focus on the throughput of the department for both undergraduates and postgraduates, and to make the department the best in the country and improve its footprint in the continent.

Her research interests are bronchiectasis in children, both in HIV-infected children as well as in cystic fibrosis in non-Caucasians in Africa. She also has an interest in lung physiological testing, particularly lung function testing in children and the determination of normative lung reference equations in African children and adults.

Masekela has published 18 peer-reviewed publications and ISBN accredited journals. She has written two book chapters on respiratory diseases in children in the tropics, in an international tropical diseases textbook and in the European Respiratory Society Monograph.

She has presented her research and given invited lectures at national and international pulmonology congresses, winning the prize for the best abstract for the MECOR and Fellow-In-Training Award for the best presentation at the American Thoracic Society Meeting in New Orleans 2010, and the Best Poster Presentation Award from the International Paediatric Pulmonology Congress, Portugal in 2013.

She is a passionate teacher and has been involved in both undergraduate and postgraduate teaching, and has supervised four successful Masters of Medicine in Paediatrics students and is currently supervising two PhD students.

She has been involved in the training of seven successful paediatric pulmonology fellows. She has also initiated a paediatric pulmonology outreach project to Polokwane Hospital, which resulted in the successful training of a paediatric pulmonologist who is currently working in the province. She has acted as a reviewer for local paediatric and pulmonology journals and the European Journal of Paediatrics.

She is an executive member of the South African Thoracic Society and is the past chairperson of the National Asthma Education Programme. She is the secretary of the Pan African Thoracic Society and is on the scientific advisory committee of the South African Cystic Fibrosis Association.

Masekela said: “I am very passionate about my work, especially research, because it may assist in developing locally relevant therapeutic interventions that are applicable in a developing world context.”

Born in Polokwane, Limpopo, Masekela loves adventure sports and hiking.

“I climbed Mt Kilimanjaro in 2013 and I am a keen but slow runner,” she said.