It’s hard to believe that 2021 has come and gone. We have started the year amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and throughout the year, the majority of staff members were actively involved with the various COVID-19 related projects at the Steve Biko Academic Hospital and its cluster health facilities. For example, we were actively involved with the WHO for the WHO Hospital Surveillance Project at the Steve Biko Academic Hospital. We have also started working at the Steve Biko Academic Hospital for implementation of first COVID-19 vaccination project. Our experience assisted us to set up the first University-based COVID-19 vaccination site in South Africa and later on to initiate an inter-provincial project for vaccination of undocumented migrants and hard-to-reach communities. We thank Dr Mathebula, Prof de Jager and Ms du Preez for their support.

The Department has continued its activity under the newly established WHO Collaborating Centre for Social Determinants of Health and Health in All Policies within the University of Pretoria (UP). We would like to thank Prof De Jager, Dr Ramokgopa and Mr Phiri from WHO Afro Regional Office for their continued support in achieving this commendable regional and global milestone.

This year marked the introduction of new medical internship programme in Public health medicine. We have trained 48 medical interns during 2021.

The inclusion of the Department’s staff in the UP COPC Research Unit has assisted our PHM team members to make meaningful contributions in the research and grant application space. We appreciate the mentorship of Prof Hugo, the Director of the Research Unit for making us a part of the family.

We would like to acknowledge the support from Dr Mathebula (CEO of the Steve Biko Academic Hospital) and her team, who have allowed us to make meaning contribution to the SBAH and its cluster network.

From a staff compliment of two in October 2017, the PHM department has managed to grow exponentially. A number of new administration staff joined our Department and few of our staff members left during this period. We wish them all success. Our learnership programme assisted five of them getting a job in the SBAH. The current profile of staff has demonstrated demographic reflective of our national transformation and employee equity priorities (63% females, 82% black, 8% white, 6% coloured, 4% Indian and 22% persons with disabilities). However, absence of PHM registrars in the Department and academic staff from the University has serious impediment on the academic work of our Department

I would like to take this opportunity to thank our collaborators (both internal and external) who have worked with us during 2021.

Finally, let me remind our collaborators and stakeholders that it is actually the care of the population and prevention of the sickness and our many service delivery innovations that bring us to work. Caring for the population is our passion!

A big thank you to our team.

Prof Deb Basu
HOD: Public Health Medicine