A Seychellois doctor, Osman Ebrahim, is one of the recipients of this year’s (2016) Ellen Kuzwayo’s Award for his “compassionate care of people with HIV/Aids and improvements in HIV treatment through research and teaching”.
Ellen Kuzwayo (born on June 29, 1914 and died on April 19, 2006) was one of the many prominent women’s rights activists and politicians in South Africa. After serving as the president of the African National Congress Youth League in the 1960s, she was elected as the first post-apartheid South African Parliament 1994. In the 1980s, Ms Kuzwayo became the first black woman to receive an honorary degree from the University of the Witwatersrand. In 1999, she retired as an MP after five years, when Nelson Mandela gave her an Order of Meritorious Service.
In 2011 the Council of the University of Johannesburg initiated the Ellen Kuzwayo Annual Award recognising outstanding contributions beyond the confines of teaching and research by an individual over an extended period of time to the promotion of the well-being of the institution or the well-being of
Society in respect of matters in which institution has a particular interest.
Dr Osman Ebrahim, the third son of the late Mr and Mrs Ebrahim Suleman of Adam Moosa, is a Seychellois who is living in South Africa for the past 35 years. After completing his medical studies at the University of Cape Town (UCT), he continued with a career in research and teaching at the UCT which also included time spent training in Molecular Medicine, University of Oxford. He moved to Johannesburg in 1996 to become Medical Director of Roche Pharmaceuticals and went into private practice in 2000.
In the 1990s, South Africa was beset by HIV/Aids. A multidisciplinary problem needing multisectoral solutions and for which health care and research professionals were at the forefront. Creative and compassionate thinkers were needed to make head way, and one such compassionate trailblazers is Dr Osman Ebrahim, a Physician/HIV & Infectious Diseases Specialist.
Dr Ebrahim was one of the clinicians who made his practice in Parktown, Johannesburg available to HIV/Aids patients when the medical fraternity was still in fear and awe of this ‘new’ syndrome.
He made medical information available to his patients and provided holistic HIV/Aids care. In addition to treatment and careful monitoring, patients were given dietary information that would support the immune system.
What he and his colleagues learned about HIV/Aids and the associated opportunistic infections was made available to the broader medical community through research publications and conference discussions.
He published with other clinicians and medical health practitioners as co-authors and was many times the leading author on publications addressing practical matters for treatment improvement, as exemplified by a recent publication entitled ‘Marginal Structural Models to Assess Delays in Second-Line HIV Treatment Initiation in South Africa. PLoS ONE 11(8):e0161469, August 2016.
Dr Ebrahim’s CV attests to his contributions to medicine and HIV/Aids through and teaching while his service to the medical community and society at large is at times only modestly read between the lines.
He was awarded a Doctorate in Medicine for his work on the Anaemia of Tuberculosis. He was one of the team under Sir Peter Ratcliffe in Oxford who first described how oxygen sensing takes place in the kidney and how the hormone erythropoieitin is regulated. He provides continuing medical education to other clinicians and registrars on HIV medicine and ARVs and has assisted many companies (Roche, Mercedes, Volkswagen, Bosch) with development of HIV/Aids workplace programmes.
Dr Ebrahim expands on his own HIV/Aids knowledge by having attended almost all major international meetings on HIV since 1996 to date.
What his CV does not show is his availability after hours to assist and advise patients or that patients from all over Africa flock to his rooms because of word of mouth testimonies from those who knew his advice made a tangible difference in their lives.
Dr Ebrahim’s CV reports on being a national leader in the field Clinical Pharmacology, honorary lectureships at the University of Pretoria and the University of the Witwatersrand and being a consultant for the World Health Organisation (WHO). In 2007 he wrote a report entitled ‘Towards Universal Access: The HIV/Aids strategy of the Seychelles’.
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