Championing child health in Africa and the world

TALI FEINBERG

Zar presented her research at the awards evening, held at UNESCO’s headquarters in Paris last week. She then visited the World Health Organisation in Geneva, Switzerland.

Born, raised and educated in South Africa, Zar works countrywide and across the African continent as both a doctor and a scientist. Her aim is to improve and save children’s lives and to shape international healthcare policy.

Zar tells SA Jewish Report how honoured and humbled she feels in having received the award, adding that she hopes her work will improve health for children globally.

In her line of work, Zar focuses on some of the most devastating illnesses in children – such as pneumonia, TB, HIV and asthma – and on developing better ways to diagnose, prevent and treat them.

“Increasingly, my work has also focused on identifying the early life origins of health or disease,” Zar explains. “I’ve established a unique African birth cohort, the Drakenstein Child Health Study, in a poor area of South Africa.

“By identifying early life exposures that promote health or predispose someone to disease, I am hopeful that new interventions to optimise child health and to prevent illness will emerge.

“My big scientific dream is for all children to not only survive and reach their fifth birthday, but to also attain complete growth and development so as to reach their full potential. I dream that we will develop strategies that eliminate the current epidemics and killer diseases for children.”

In a 2010 article about Zar in one of the world’s best known medical journals The Lancet, Andrew Bush, professor of paediatric respirology at Imperial College London, described her as “one of the few people who is able to cross the divide between developed and developing worlds”; and her work as being “of immediate relevance to the poorest children”.

In a world that’s currently lacking in strong leadership, it is heartening to hear that Zar is a passionate supporter of human rights and equality.

“The gap between rich and poor is a major challenge – and a major determinant of health, education, opportunity and development,” she says. “We need greater equity in distribution of resources and in access to health and education.”

She is also a strong advocate of women’s empowerment. “We must develop better strategies to empower women, to ensure equal access to education and to promote equality generally.”

The challenges facing migrant populations and refugees, along with intolerance, prejudice and racism, worry her. “We’ve seen a rising tide of this globally. We must promote a culture of tolerance, respect for differences, and dialogue rather than violence. Education is key to attaining this, and we also need to reduce economic disparities to alleviate poverty and enable economic empowerment.”

Zar’s interest in science began at an early age. “From my school days,” she recalls, “I had an aunt and uncle who were basic scientists and who first showed me a laboratory and a microscope, which fascinated me.”

Her late grandmother, Ethel Selipsky, “was a wonderful inspiration. She taught me to believe in myself and that women could have a dream and achieve it. My parents, especially my mom, Shirley Zar, inspired me with a strong value system of social justice.”

With only 28% of scientists across the world being women, Zar faced barriers as a woman in the field, including “prejudice from colleagues, lack of support from senior people, lack of funding to undertake the research, lack of local expertise in specific areas and a lack of models or structures to enable me to be a scientist and a mother”.

Not one to rest on her laurels and accept the status quo, Zar found new ways to collaborate. She also developed her own pathway of research, obtained international grants and worked at growing local capacity and finding excellent mentors.

Female scientists have more ability to think out of the box, says Zar. “They are committed to their work, they are able to grow capacity and work collaboratively, they can mentor others, and they work efficiently.”

Zar laments the lack of funding in South Africa to enable scientists to do excellent research, as well as the lack of support and expertise. This, she explains, carries the danger of exploitative models of research being allowed to flourish. She cites as an example researchers from high-income countries who do not help to build local capacity. With this danger comes a concomitant misunderstanding of the value that lies in good research.

However, says Zar, “I was born in South Africa, so this is my home. I have always felt a strong commitment to working where I am needed, to contribute and work in areas where there is a real need. The childhood population in South Africa and in Africa is proportionately high (up to 60% of the population in some African countries), and there are relatively few resources to serve this population. So, there’s lots of opportunity to contribute.”

To those girls who want to succeed in science, she says: “Strive for excellence. Find an area that interests you, or about which you feel passionate; look for a good mentor and believe in yourself.”

Expressing her gratitude to “all the staff I work with, my collaborators and mentors, our funders and the families and children I’ve been privileged to work with”, Zar says the L’Oréal award is “a wonderful opportunity to highlight the ability of clinical research to advance and transform child health”.