Heather Zar
Heather J Zar is a South African physician and scientist specialising in the care of children with respiratory diseases like asthma, tuberculosis and pneumonia.
Quotes
[edit]Doctor supports African children’s respiratory health
[edit]Doctor assists African children with breathing
- Conventional practice was that TB was difficult to confirm in children.
- There was a misconception that asthma is rare in African children.
- The study showed that it's common, with prevalence rates that are often higher than global rates.
- The study will hopefully provide valuable information to identify new interventions for improving child health.
- Translational research is the bridge between clinical and basic science research.
- The implementation of findings into practice and public health including policy and guidelines.
- Despite children being a third of the population, child health is relatively underfunded and underresourced.
- Child health has been worsening over the past 20 years in South Africa.
- More funding and capacity development are needed to strengthen child health programmes.
Asthma spacer by SA doctor earns recognition
[edit]South African doctor’s asthma spacer proves successful
- My hope is that it helps shine a spotlight on this relatively under resourced area of research.
- Children are so seldom prioritised on the health agenda.
- There’s a lack of knowledge about the burden of childhood illnesses even though children make up 37 percent of our population.
Heather Zar: Physician-Researcher and Global Advocate for Lung Health
[edit]Heather Zar: Doctor, Researcher, and Champion of Global Lung Health
- Much childhood death and illness is preventable.
- Improving access to affordable, effective interventions globally is vital.
- There’s so much respiratory disease and there’s so much to be done.
- I was always very interested in the potential public health impact.
- I wanted to be in an area in which you could turn things around.
- In pulmonology, there’s a lot of immediate change oxygen, antibiotics, those sorts of interventions, plus interventions on a longer timeframe.
Conversation with Heather J. Zar
[edit]Discussion with Heather J. Zar
- There’s so much respiratory disease and there’s so much to be done.
- It’s a key issue to get these products to low and middle income countries (LMICs).
- This is where children are dying from RSV.
- Paediatrics is about creating better futures.
- The big question in the project is, what makes for a healthy child?
- We enrolled pregnant women, moms in these peri urban poor areas.
- Following them through pregnancy, through childbirth, and now we are following the children who are turning 11 years old.
- We wanted to look very broadly to understand why some children get ill.
- Why some children are healthy children from the same communities.
- We looked at growth, at neurodevelopment, and now as the children are getting older, we are starting to look at non-communicable diseases like cardiometabolic disease and asthma.
- The mother’s health, both physical and psychological, factors like depression and anxiety.
- We looked at the home environment, we visited the homes before the children were born, and after.
- We looked at child and maternal nutrition, at allergies.
- We even looked at things like parenting style.
- Some of their findings were predictable.
- Mothers who smoke in pregnancy have children who are smaller, children who have more lung disease, children who are less healthy.
- Now this is very important because of the new vaccines, which we really need to access for our children.
- Children suffering from diseases of poverty.
- When Mandela was freed, there was so much euphoria and so much hope for the future.
- We felt that this is where we could make a contribution.
External Links
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