A pioneer in SA medicine

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Published Apr 24, 2018

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Professor Marina Xaba-Mokoena, a pulmonologist and pioneering health sciences academic, committed her career to helping people in the rural Eastern Cape. Nelson Mandela University awarded her an honorary doctorate at its graduation ceremony on Wednesday.

“As a black person it was extremely difficult to become a doctor in South Africa a century ago when Nelson Mandela was born as there were no facilities to study here. This meant finding a way to study abroad,” saids Xaba-Mokoena, who turns 80 this year.

She speaks with personal knowledge as her father, Dr Rotoli Xaba, who qualified in the medical profession in 1936, was the 23rd “non-white” to become a doctor in South Africa - each one of them qualifying abroad.

“He was from Willowvale in the Eastern Cape, where I was born and he managed to get his medical degree in Scotland through a bursary from the United Transkeian Territories General Council known as the ‘Bunga’.”

Xaba-Mokoena followed in his footsteps. Graduating as a doctor in 1973 at the Stockholm University in Sweden, she went on to specialise in lung disease, becoming a pulmonologist. She, too, achieved this on bursaries, initially training to be a nurse. After passing her final exams in nursing with honours, she received the SA Nursing Council gold medal for achieving the highest marks in the country.

This led to her being funded by the Bantu Welfare Trust of the Institute of Race Relations to receive orthopaedic nursing training in London, where she obtained the highest marks in the whole of England and Wales. Following this, she received a scholarship to study medicine in Sweden and after six months of intensive training in the Swedish language, she began her medical studies.

“It wasn’t easy but we had to find a way as it was not unusual for people in our community to have these aspirations.

“There were a lot of educated, politically conscious people in Willowvale, which had good primary and secondary schools, with excellent, politically conscious teachers and principals who produced top results.

“Many of us completed our schooling at Methodist boarding schools, of which there were several in Transkei, including Healdtown near Fort Beaufort, which I attended for five years and completed my matric there. Mandela also completed his matric there, as did a number of other South African leaders, including Robert Sobukwe, Govan Mbeki, the Emeritus Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane and the Reverend Seth Mokitimi, who became the first black president of the Methodist Church of southern Africa.

“The Methodist or missionary schools did a lot of good work as far as education is concerned, and though they are rightly criticised for their role in colonialism, we received a quality education, which many did not. Regrettably, these schools were destroyed by the entry of Bantu education when many of the teachers and principals were expelled and several went into exile.”

In her matric year, Xaba-Mokoena’s father died. He never saw his wish fulfilled of seeing one of his children taking after him and working as a doctor in rural Transkei. Financially, his death put a strain on the family and Xaba-Mokoena’s maths teacher, a Miss Blunsom, paid for her fees so she could finish the first year of her BSc at Fort Hare.

Healdtown matriculants typically studied at what was then called Fort Hare University College. Mandela met Oliver Tambo there.

Hard work and determination catapulted Xaba-Mokoena to the top of her classes.

“I wanted to prove to myself and everyone else that you can succeed at whatever you really want to do and I was fortunate to have a great motivator in my mother, Mildred Xaba (nee Mvambo), She was a primary school teacher and a leader in the church, the Girl Guides and the Women’s Zenzele (“Do It Yourself”) Association, with its motto, Lift as You Rise.

Xaba-Mokoena was determined to specialise in lung disease and open the first faculty of medicine and health sciences at the then-University of Transkei, now Walter Sisulu University.

Her specific interest in lung disease started when her husband, economist PE Mokoena, developed asthma. This led her to into the world of lung diseases, including asthma, asbestosis, pneumonia and TB, a major cause of death in South Africa compounded by HIV.

“I knew I could help people with these diseases and in 1980 I started working as a pulmonologist at the Mthatha general hospital,” said Xaba-Mokoena.

She was appointed as the hospital’s principal specialist in 1982 and in 1983 the International Union against Tuberculosis appointed her as a member of the Scientific Committee on Respiratory Diseases.

“I formed the Transkei National TB Association, the local counterpart of the SA National Tuberculosis Association. We organised international conferences and made sure that the most effective TB drugs were made available to treat (patients) in Transkei.

“I saw an encouraging decline in TB until the scourge of HIV hit on the positive side, many diseases are preventable at relatively low cost, and people must be educated about this. Many diseases are also treatable.

“TB, if caught early, can be cured. Thus, when we founded the faculty of medicine and health sciences at the University of Transkei in 1985, we chose to focus on primary health care and disease prevention rather than predominantly on curative medicine,” said Xaba-Mokoena who remained with the university until 1994.

Her subsequent posts included serving as the medical superintendent, specialist chest physician and chief physician at the Duncan Village Day Hospital in East London and as chief physician and consulting principal specialist at the East London hospital complex where she worked until 2013 when she retired at the age of 75.

“Throughout my career I have emphasised the need to promote disease prevention and health promotion in all our communities and I am delighted that the executive dean of the health sciences faculty at Nelson Mandela, paediatric cardiologist Professor Lungile Pepeta, is doing this.”

“This approach is spot on. So many diseases are non-communicable such as high blood pressure, obesity and diabetes. We need to educate people about how to avoid or manage them and how to keep their immune system strong, which makes them more resistant to infection and helps them to live a longer, healthier life.

“My parents died in their fifties and most of my seven siblings died before the age of 50 as high blood pressure and diabetes is very prevalent in my family. When I turned 38 I developed very high blood pressure and so when I made it to 50 I had a big celebration, and here I am at 80.”

Still highly active, Xaba-Mokoena is national president of the SA Medical Association. She continues to write articles for the SA Medical Journal, is a lay preacher in the Methodist Church and recently authored her memoirs, Dream Fulfilled.

Her secret for longevity is “determination and a healthy lifestyle”. She goes to gym and hydrotherapy several times a week, stopped eating sugar years ago and is careful not to eat a lot of fatty or fast foods. “It has made a huge difference to my blood pressure and general health. This doesn’t mean I haven’t had health issues but I am still going strong.

“It is my greatest joy to be bestowed with this honorary doctorate and see so many health sciences students graduating from this wonderful university named after Nelson Mandela.”

Saturday Star 

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