Page 5 - Science in Africa

Professor Bongani Mayosi

rofessor Bongani Mayosi is the
dean of the Faculty of Health
Sciences at the University of
Cape Town.
He was born and brought
Pup in the Transkei where he
attended St John’s College in Mthatha,
Eastern Cape, South Africa.
His father was a rural doctor and, from
an early age, he was taught the value of
knowledge and confronted the inequalities
that are a sad cornerstone of apartheid
South Africa’s legacy. These two early
lessons set him on a path of contributing
to improving the health of South Africa’s
poor people.
Professor Mayosi graduated in medicine
with distinction from the then
University of Natal (now University of
KwaZulu-Natal) in 1990, and
proceeded to train in internal
medicine and cardiology at the
Groote Schuur Hospital and the
University of Cape Town (UCT)
from 1993 to 1997.
In 1998, he went to the University
of Oxford as the Nuffield Oxford
Medical Fellow in cardiovascular
medicine where he worked under the
tutelage of Professor Hugh Watkins.
His doctoral thesis was on the genetic
determination of risk factors in
families.
He returned to Cape Town in 2001 to
develop a research programme on the
origins and prevention of poverty-related
heart diseases such as pericardial
tuberculosis, rheumatic heart disease and
cardiomyopathy.
His research has followed three lines of
enquiry. First, he has defined the optimal
methods for the diagnosis and treatment of
tuberculous pericarditis. The research
outputs of the Pan-African Investigation of
the Management of Pericarditis (IMPI)
multicentre research consortium, which he
initiated in 2004, established his status as World’s top
the leading international scholar on
tuberculous pericarditis today.
Second, he founded the first global study
of clinical characteristics and outcomes in
rheumatic heart disease (the Global
Rheumatic Heart Disease Registry or TB scholar
REMEDY study) and put the concept of
primary prevention of rheumatic fever as a
means to eradicate rheumatic heart disease
on the global agenda of the World Heart
Federation and the World Health Mayosi was appointed as professor and president of the Pan-African Society of
Organisation. head of the department of medicine at Cardiology.
Finally, he has established genetic studies Groote Schuur Hospital and the UCT from In his role as a global leader in medicine,
of cardiomyopathy and familial fibrosis that 2006 to 2015. he has made active scholarly contributions
have led to the discovery of novel biological He has also served as the immediate past to the assessment of the burden of disease
mechanisms of heart disease and fibrosis. chairperson of the South African National and health research policy at local and
He has published more than 300 peer- Health Research Committee, and serves as international levels through articles that
reviewed articles, 13 book chapters, two the chairperson of the African Advisory have been published in leading international
books and raised more than R250 million Committee on Health Research of the World journals, including The Lancet and the New
(around US$20 million) in research funding. Health Organisation – Africa Region, and as England Journal of Medicine.
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