Ray's Words
On a Monday morning in August, 2016, South African Wayde van Niekerk became the fastest person on earth across 400 meters of an athletics track, raising whoops of unbridled joy and admiration. I was left considering my own slow,
Fifty years ago, unbeknown to the world, the country stood poised to breach one of the most significant frontiers in medical science, the transplantation of a human heart from one person to another. Such a procedure – already perfected in
University of Cape Town and Groote Schuur Hospital cardiothoracic surgeon Dr Tim Pennel joined East London cardiologist Dave Kettles in a discussion on the challenges in diagnosing and treating heart disease in South Africa. The event was hosted by Life
(A composite article published in newspapers in April.) On October 11 last year, I received a donor heart in a transplant operation at the private Christiaan Barnard Memorial Hospital in Cape Town. I was the 216th heart recipient to come
It is noticeable that, while most people can recite the names of surgical pioneers like Chris Barnard and transplant recipients like Louis Washkansky and Dorothy Fisher, few of us know the donors who have either voluntarily sacrificed much or whose
There is almost zero access to heart surgery for poor people in rural areas, who typically die without treatment, according to the self-assessment of the heart transplant unit at Groote Schuur Hospital and the University of Cape Town. The unit,
I would never have been a fan of Professor Chris Barnard, growing up in the 1960s and ’70s. He was, after all, an Afrikaner male in a country ruled by Afrikaner men who made it their life’s mission to legally
The Christiaan Barnard Memorial Hospital (CBMH formerly the City Park Hospital) in Cape Town, is where I am currently admitted while I await final authorisation of a heart transplant. The private hospital unit has had significant success in both heart
Recent Comments