husband-father-son 😅brother-friend 🤪Physician-teacher Emergency doc 😰paediatrician-carer 🤗
cricket coach 🧢musician 😎
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My Story
I am an Emergency Doctor working in Australia (Brisbane) who specialises in looking after children (and adults) in Emergency Departments. I have the privilege of looking after sick and injured children and their families, in their most vulnerable and distressed of times. I am very grateful for the opportunity to help children every day as best as I can, with the skills I have been taught, supported by teams of young doctors and nurses working in very difficult, stressful circumstances in overcrowded and underfunded environments.
None of us achieve our goals without standing on the shoulders of giants and without the support of family - and let's not forget the random acts of kindness of strangers (or the strangeness of deliberate acts of 'kindners' 😎)
I was born into a chaotic country in 1974 in the darkest period of South Africa's long 300 year struggle against oppression and discrimination of the native peoples of the beautiful landscape of Cape Town. My ancestors were the original muslim Malay slaves endentured by the Dutch East India Company in 1652 to establish a port for securing the lucrative trade route from Europe to the Indonesian archipelago via the fairest cape.
Early Schooling & Apartheid
My father was one of the first non-white specialist gynaecologists in South Africa - he was allowed to train in Obstetrics at the University of Cape Town in 1980, which had started to allow a limited quota of non white doctors to specialize.
We lived in Cape Town in the 'coloured' suburb of Bo-Kaap - segregated and designated for coloured people to live in a sectioned off area by the Apartheid Government laws of the time.
The Group Areas Act was official legislation used by the white South African government to keep white South Africans secluded and safe from non white communities whom they perceived as a threat.
I went to school at Harold Cressy High School - a school for 'coloured' people - again segregated according to the Education Act - whereby white South Africans were afforded opportunities to be educated in separate white schools which were by law provided more funding per white child than coloured or black schools.
Harold Cressy High school was named after the first coloured person to achieve a university degree. Harold Cressy (1 February 1889 – 23 August 1916) was a South African headteacher and activist. He was the first Coloured person to gain a degree in South Africa and he worked to improve education for non-white South Africans.
Harold Cressy
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Harold Cressy High School
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The University of Cape Town 1993-1998
Getting into medical school in South Africa was the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life. UCT medical school was positioning itself as a progressive university in the 1990's. The intake for a medical school in 1993 was 250 students. Only 30 of these places were offered to non-white students of 'suitable calibre'. The rest were exclusive to white students only.
Progress in South Africa in the 1980's and 90's was obviously awesome.
I spent most of 1991 and 1992 studying and training hard to be in the top 30 students in the country so as to fulfill my dream of becoming a doctor. I was not especially intelligent or gifted so I worked extremely hard and managed to achieve my goal of successfully gaining admission in 1993. I had spent so much time working toward this goal that I paid little thought to what it would be like to study medicine or even consider what it would be like!
For every child who managed to achieve success in sporting, academic or spiritual life, an entire community of family, teachers, tutors and extended family and friends have helped that child through every step of the arduous way.
Progress in South Africa in the 1980's and 90's was obviously awesome.
I spent most of 1991 and 1992 studying and training hard to be in the top 30 students in the country so as to fulfill my dream of becoming a doctor. I was not especially intelligent or gifted so I worked extremely hard and managed to achieve my goal of successfully gaining admission in 1993. I had spent so much time working toward this goal that I paid little thought to what it would be like to study medicine or even consider what it would be like!
For every child who managed to achieve success in sporting, academic or spiritual life, an entire community of family, teachers, tutors and extended family and friends have helped that child through every step of the arduous way.
Being a Ghost at University was fun
Being a non white university student at a university designed and modeled for white students was an interesting experience.
Essentially I was managed and treated like a ghost for 6 years. We roamed the halls of the university and the hospitals while our lecturers and professors pretended we were not there. If we did well - we passed - and if we did poorly, we managed to fit the stereotype expected of non white people - to be lazy and inefficient and just ‘not up to scratch’ in general.
There were obvious exceptions.
I just can’t think of any. 😐
There were a few trailblazer non white specialists who had managed to be tolerated into positions within the academic hospital setup. These pioneers flourished despite the systems’ obvious disdain and indifference to non white clinician teachers.
Essentially I was managed and treated like a ghost for 6 years. We roamed the halls of the university and the hospitals while our lecturers and professors pretended we were not there. If we did well - we passed - and if we did poorly, we managed to fit the stereotype expected of non white people - to be lazy and inefficient and just ‘not up to scratch’ in general.
There were obvious exceptions.
I just can’t think of any. 😐
There were a few trailblazer non white specialists who had managed to be tolerated into positions within the academic hospital setup. These pioneers flourished despite the systems’ obvious disdain and indifference to non white clinician teachers.
Grootte Schuur Hospital (Cape Town)
Dr Aziz Aboo and Emergency Medicine
Dr Aziz Aboo was an excellent mentor to any student at UCT, but particularly non white students loved him. He was allowed to have a post as Head of the Emergency Department of Grootte Schuur Hospital ( a post no one else wanted because it meant actually doing some work!) in the 90’s and also worked in one of the Township Hospitals - Jooste Hospital (now converted into Khayelitsha Hospital in 2012)
He affectionately called his department the ‘Kreefgat’ of the tertiary white elephant Grootte Schuur Hospital. Roughly translated into English it means ‘the anus of a lobster’ because no one really wanted to work in the ED as it was one of the busiest and most stressful places to be.
But I loved it ! Dr Aboo used to ask us to remove our stethoscopes and gave us 2 minutes to stare at ( observe) the patients from the bedside. We were allowed no words or equipment. He almost never failed to make a diagnosis just on the basis of accurate observation and detection of subtle clinical signs.
He was like a genius !
Except he was the wrong color for that designation 🤦♂️
and so went mostly unnoticed and unheralded for the majority of his professional life in South Africa, but managed to inspire an entire generation of non white clinicians to enter into acute medicine or emergency medicine.
He affectionately called his department the ‘Kreefgat’ of the tertiary white elephant Grootte Schuur Hospital. Roughly translated into English it means ‘the anus of a lobster’ because no one really wanted to work in the ED as it was one of the busiest and most stressful places to be.
But I loved it ! Dr Aboo used to ask us to remove our stethoscopes and gave us 2 minutes to stare at ( observe) the patients from the bedside. We were allowed no words or equipment. He almost never failed to make a diagnosis just on the basis of accurate observation and detection of subtle clinical signs.
He was like a genius !
Except he was the wrong color for that designation 🤦♂️
and so went mostly unnoticed and unheralded for the majority of his professional life in South Africa, but managed to inspire an entire generation of non white clinicians to enter into acute medicine or emergency medicine.
Internship, emergency and Paediatrics
I managed to scrape through my internship in 1999, and completed 6 months each of intensive back breaking rotations in Adult Emergency at Grootte Schuur and Paediatric Emergency medicine at The Red Cross Children’s Hospital.
I also spent 3 exciting months working in n Gangland GF Jooste Hospital, which was a rite of passage for many young Capetonian non white doctors, as it serviced one of our very own communities - the Gang riddled Manenberg district on the Cape Flats. This is the region where our grandparents and parents were evicted to when the Apartheid Government forcibly removed them from their homes in District Six in the City Centre of Cape Town.
This is one of the sources of the despicable violence that affects life in the poorer townships of South Africa today.
Although I would later regail registrars in Australia about training in the ‘fires of Morrdor’, these were the best training experiences of my life. Seeing 30-40 patients per 24 hour on call shift, 60 hour stretches of non stop in hospital on call, 80 hour weeks, being the senior house officer on call for emergencies - these were an amazing and privileged experience, not since matched by any other clinical experience in the 20 years that have elapsed since.
I also spent 3 exciting months working in n Gangland GF Jooste Hospital, which was a rite of passage for many young Capetonian non white doctors, as it serviced one of our very own communities - the Gang riddled Manenberg district on the Cape Flats. This is the region where our grandparents and parents were evicted to when the Apartheid Government forcibly removed them from their homes in District Six in the City Centre of Cape Town.
This is one of the sources of the despicable violence that affects life in the poorer townships of South Africa today.
Although I would later regail registrars in Australia about training in the ‘fires of Morrdor’, these were the best training experiences of my life. Seeing 30-40 patients per 24 hour on call shift, 60 hour stretches of non stop in hospital on call, 80 hour weeks, being the senior house officer on call for emergencies - these were an amazing and privileged experience, not since matched by any other clinical experience in the 20 years that have elapsed since.
Morrdor probably had less TB and chest gunshot trauma