About Us

CEPHS fulfills an important need in South Africa, Africa and internationally for research into:- and the development of Health Ethics by building capacity across various academic disciplines.  The centre provides teaching and the training required by the Health Professions Council of South Africa.  Research and teaching of health ethics are informed by the conceptual sophistication of philosophy.  This combination makes substantive sense in that ethics is considered as being derived from and underpinned by philosophy. Both ethics and conceptual sophistication are furthermore pertinent to the professional practice and theoretical engagements of all health sciences.

The Centre brings together and mobilises existing resources at UP across various departments as well as collaborating with international counterparts.

CEPHS espouses a key orientation of being person- and people-centred in the sense of the African ethic ‘ubuntu’, which principally refers to an interconnectedness of people. This orientation guides the operations of the Centre as an expression of commitment to people in their individual and communitarian capacities. This orientation is particularly important considering technological and scientific advances that may easily displace a commitment to people with a narrower interest in diseases, disease processes, bodily features, or the diagnostic and treatment offerings of technology. This orientation underscores the African locality of the Centre and resonates well with the professional and scientific developments internationally to make health practice and services more person- and people-centred.