Daniel Ncayiyana

• University of Cape Town

p>This piece focuses on the current state of graduate education in Sub-Saharan Africa spelling out some of the challenges faced as well as areas of improvement over the last five years. We emphasize the critical importance of graduate education to national development. We make suggestions about creating high quality graduate programs including the...

A discussion of the state of Graduate Education in contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa, the challenges it faces, and suggestions for next steps

This response forms part of a debate related to the editorial by Professor Ncayiyana concerning the national circumcision programme in South Africa (S Afr Med J 2011;101:775-777). Other articles in this debate: Kessinger and Millard. S Afr Med J 2012;102(3):123-124. Venter et al. S Afr Med J 2012;102(3):124-125.

1993, the year I was appointed Editor of the SAMJ, turned out to be a Dickensian moment in the history of South Africa. As in The Tale of Two Cities, 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light,...

Henrietta Lacks died of cervical cancer at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, on 4 October 1951 at the age of 31. Some 25 years later, her husband received a jaw-dropping call from Dr Susan Hsu, an immigrant Chinese genetics researcher in Baltimore. 'We've got your wife. She's alive in a laboratory. We've been doing research on her...

The notion of feminisation of a profession signifies a variety of meanings. In much of the literature, a profession is feminised when women constitute the majority of its practitioners. However, Menkel-Meadow identifies two other meanings: those who recognise certain attributes as uniquely feminine regard the profession as feminised 'when traits su...

For better or for worse, the date 31 May will remain embedded in the annals of South African history. On this date in 1902 the second Anglo-Boer War officially ended, and in 1910 the four British colonies of the Cape of Good Hope, Natal, Transvaal and the Orange Free State united to form a single country under British dominion. Bar this event, thes...

-

In June 2009, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the influenza H1N1 virus a pandemic, the first such pandemic to be declared in 41 years. At that time, the new strain had infected 28 000 people worldwide, with 141 fatalities. Since then the pandemic has turned out to be a bit of a damp squib for much of the global public. Americans believ...

The fundamental function of medical journals therefore is to publish not the 'truth' per se, but rather the current state of knowledge derived from good research conducted and reported with the utmost integrity.

Preface The unprecedented changes in the means of generating, delivering, accessing and disseminating knowledge and information are having far-reaching impacts, direct and indirect, on higher education systems worldwide. For universities in sub-Saharan Africa, where management and administrative capacities are already limited, responding to these c...

Even successful political dispensation would not immediately end the miseryZimbabwe has become a living hell for ordinary Zimbabweans, who have had to endure horrific punishment for voting the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) to victory in the presidential and parliamentary elections of March 2008. In a comprehensive and meticulously...

See also Papers p 702 On the evidence of such archaeological finds as Lucy, the australopithecine female unearthed in Ethiopia's Hadar region, Africa is the cradle of the human race. Africa was also home to notable ancient civilisations—the Egypt of the Pharaohs, the Ashanti Empire of the Gold Coast, and the Zimbabwe settlements in the south. Giv...

outh Africa captured the world's headlines — and the developing world gave a sigh of relief — on Apr. 19, 2001, when the Pharmaceutical Association of South Africa (PMA), which represents some of the world's biggest drug manufacturers, withdrew its lawsuit against the gov- ernment in the Pretoria High Court. The government's victory in this case wa...

During a 3-day meeting at Bellagio in January 2001, a group of 20 editors from 12 countries in 5 continents met to map out a strategy for the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME)'s continued development in the service of medical editors over the next several years. The group: 1) Developed a statement of principles on the standards of profess...

To determine the patterns of sexual maturation, sexual behaviour, contraceptive practice and reproductive health among Transkeian adolescents. Cross-sectional descriptive study, using self administered questionnaires. Twenty-six schools in 22 rural districts of the Transkei region of the Eastern Cape. Standard 5, 6 and 7 pupils of both sexes. Demog...

Teenagers make up a quarter of all mothers in Transkei, South Africa, and well over 75% of them are unmarried. Such a high rate of teenage pregnancy is indicative of a high level of unprotected adolescent sexual activity. We examined sexual behaviour, knowledge and attitudes to sexuality among adolescent school girls in Transkei, using a self-admin...

No significant differences were found when the obstetric outcome of 515 rural adolescents aged 16 years and younger was compared with that of an equal number of matched young adult rural women aged 20-29 years in respect of booking status, postpartum haemoglobin content, operative/instrumental delivery, mean neonatal birth mass and the incidence of...

A retrospective review of the records of 9 142 deliveries occurring during the 5 calendar years 1980-1984 was undertaken to determine the incidence of neural tube defects (NTDs) among black babies in the rural Transkei district of Umzimkulu. The hospital incidence of 6.13 as well as the extrapolated district-wide incidence of 3.79 NTDs/1 000 births...