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UCT PAEDIATRICS RESEARCH
EARNS UK COVID-19 GRANT
The funding enables a project aimed at better understanding
COVID-19 in African children.
The National Institute for Health
Research/United Kingdom
Research and Innovation Global
Effort on COVID-19 (NIHR/UKRI
GECO) grant is a collaborative
funding opportunity. It has been
awarded to an international research
project under the leadership of Professor
Heather Zar, chair of the Department of
Paediatrics and Child Health and the director
of the South African Medical Research Council
Unit on Child and Adolescent Health at UCT.
In low-middle-income countries ,
children make up a large proportion of the
40
population. They also face malnutrition, HIV
exposure, tuberculosis and prior infection
with endemic coronaviruses.
The awarded project aims to investigate
this spectrum of illness in African children and
identify their risk of infection and development
of SARS-CoV-2 infection or severe COVID-19
disease. Zar is collaborating with partners
at the universities of Western Australia and
Southampton in the United Kingdom.
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UNLOCKING UCT
LEADERSHIP IN STEMM
Associate Professor Gina Ziervogel has been invited to join Homeward
Bound, an international leadership programme.
An associate professor in the Department
of Environmental and Geographical
Science, Ziervogel is a geographer and
climate change adaptation expert. She is
one of 100 women chosen from across the
globe to join the one-year programme.
Homeward Bound is designed to
encourage women working in science,
technology, engineering, mathematics
and medicine (STEMM) to take on more
leadership roles. It involves 11 months of
collaborative online learning, with a voyage
to the Antarctic in the final month.
According to the World Economic Forum,
only 30% of global researchers in STEMM
are women. In South Africa, Stats SA shows
women make up 23% of the STEM workforce.
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