Remarks by WHO Regional Director for Africa, Dr Matshidiso Moeti
Professor Flavia, Acting Vice Principal,
Professor Tiaan de Jager, Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences,
Deputy Deans,
Professors Steenkamp and Mashamba-Thompson,
The College of Professors,
Graduates,
Families and friends,
The WHO Representatives and colleagues,
My family, my husband, my daughter, my brother, cousins, and nephew,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Good afternoon to you all. I am indeed deeply honoured, excited and humbled to have been invited to join the family of this extraordinary institution and to have this opportunity to address today’s gathering.
It is such a prestigious recognition to join the heavyweights decorated by the University of Pretoria, including Nelson Mandela, who was awarded an Honorary Law Doctorate in 1997; Dr. David Nabarro, an old colleague and friend; and the Director General of WHO, Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus, my boss, both last year.
My warmest congratulations to all the 2024 graduates. Well done to you!
I couldn’t be prouder of you as well as of the teachers, the coaches, and most of all, the parents and family who supported and guided you along the way. In the same spirit, I thank my husband, daughter, other family members, friends, and WHO colleagues who are with me today. To my family, I particularly say “Thank You” for frequently accepting my absence during my duty travels.
I was privileged to spend yesterday in a very informative and highly enjoyable immersion at the Faculty of Public Health, its schools and institutes, and the Steve Biko Hospital. I gained an understanding of the wide range of areas in which research, knowledge generation, and translation into action with a positive impact on health in South Africa and worldwide is being carried out. All of this while training future experts and leaders for South Africa and other countries on the continent.
The Faculty deservedly ranks highly at the global level in a number of areas, and I’m certain that we, as its graduates, are proud to be members of this family. I’m confident that today’s graduates will follow the principles that govern action here as mentors, leaders, and actors to ensure that families and communities, whatever their economic status, have equal access to knowledge and services and gain the agency to be in good health and contribute to the development of this great country.
Just a few words to share with you. First of all, strive and be ambitious for the results of your work and their benefit to your patients, community, and country. Regard the sky as the limit for this. With the humility of accepting learning from your mistakes as a valuable experience to leverage.
Second, use data and evidence to inform what you do. You have the good fortune to be graduating in an age when this is easily accessible. Its power to influence the highest political decision-makers, right down to communities and families, is unparalleled. It is our duty to translate it appropriately and to fight the misinformation that has emerged strongly as well. Given the day’s powerful communication means.
Thirdly, seek and drive connection in your work between yourselves and team members, disciplines, professions, institutions, and actors. None of us as individuals and organizations can succeed alone. This has been proven at all levels.
An example is how the most influential and well-funded international organisations, including the Global Health Initiatives, the Global Fund to Fight HIV, TB and Malaria, GAVI, PEPFAR are today actively and formally seeking connection around health systems and communities. The greatest connectors are the people that we all seek to serve. I was thrilled to learn yesterday of people-centred approaches emerging in some of the work of the Faculty, as it is in some countries, in the region, and in our WHO secretariat. This will need effort.
We feel comfortable sometimes working in isolation, showing our brilliance and our excellence, but it will definitely be worth it in outcomes and efficiency, in the way that the resources for health are spent.
Last but not least, let equity be a central driving principle in all of our work, not only as an abstract principle, but as a guide to our daily actions.
The COVID-19 pandemic and the delayed and reduced access to key tools in low-income countries, including here in Africa, dramatically demonstrated how it can figure in intentions and speeches, but succumb to own needs when situations are tough. This is why one of the best moments in my visit to the university yesterday was spent with the talented women leaders and students who are part of your community. They are ensuring that all the work you do in South Africa and the world doesn’t lose out on their capacities.
Equity has informed my own life and career as a child born in KwaThema in spring 70 years ago, seeing pretty quickly that this was a huge issue in our community and in our country, which scores highest today in the world in inequity despite the efforts of the past 30 years.
In the health sector here in South Africa, realizing the right to health care for everyone is still far from reality. The inequitable health financing and virtually dual health systems, public and private sector, a legacy from the Apartheid era continue to exacerbate inequalities.
Over 50% of the total health expenditure is spent on providing health services to around 16% of the population working in the formal sector. The remaining 84%, the poorer population, is left to the public sector facilities, which are generally overcrowded, understaffed, and under-resourced in comparison.
I do admit to having been the privileged child of two doctors who ran a general practice in the township of KwaThema, but I observed even then as a little girl that they served mainly low-income people.
My father was born in a farm laborers’ family in Swartruggens, a situation virtually of slavery, I would say, and walked to Joburg to join his parents in Orlando, worked in all sorts of ways, including as a caddie to get a scholarship, got a scholarship and graduated as a doctor at WITS. So determined was he to be educated and to help educate his siblings and those of my mother, whose own mother was widowed when my mom was just entering medical school. My family left South Africa for Botswana when I was 11 years old, to secure better educational prospects for myself and my three siblings, and to escape what had become the hostile interactions with Apartheid police, who believed my father was hiding a gun in the house and used to visit regularly to find it, apparently.
In the various jobs that I have done, running the TB ward at a district hospital in the south of Botswana, as a senior doctor in the pediatric ward in the referral hospital in Gaborone, and as a director of the Occupational Health and then HIV units in the Ministry of Health, then in UNICEF, in UNAIDS and now in WHO, inequity was a glaringly obvious driver of patterns of illness and success.
I've worked throughout my career to address economic, social, and cultural inequities, driving the vulnerability, particularly of women and girls. I am proud to have achieved gender equity in the Senior Management Team in the WHO Africa Regional Office, but do acknowledge that we have a lot more to do to make that the case in our 47 offices around the continent.
My favorite project is having brought in over 100 young women as UN Volunteers to form our pipeline to progress to leadership but recognize many other conditions that limit women’s choices and opportunities that need to be addressed, not least, women’s primary role in family caregiving from children to sick family members for which we know women get no payment.
Dear class of 2024, this university has nurtured you with a first-rate education and is now sending you out into the world to help open the doors of opportunity to health and to everybody. I'll give you a few pieces of advice.
You might have heard the saying, we cannot direct the wind, but you can adjust the sails. From experience, I can assure you that it’s not the decisions you make in life that matter most, but what you make of them. Things work out in your favor when you persevere, and when you are determined and agile to make the best of your decisions and whatever life throws at you.
Secondly, show empathy for others. It is the bedrock of our profession. Most people you’ll meet in clinics, in hospitals, in laboratories, in offices and, if you choose that direction, in humanitarian and emergency fields, will not care how much money you have in your bank account, whether you are important at work or famous around town. They want to know that you are somebody who cares and makes a difference in their lives.
I know that you are starting your careers at a challenging time. See this as a privilege, because moments like the times we are living through force us to try harder, to dig deeper, to discover gifts we never knew we had, and to find the greatness within each of us. Don’t ever shy away from that endeavor. Don’t stop adding to the body of work and the body of knowledge for a healthier world.
I can promise you that you’ll be successful in that continued effort, as will this country that we all love. So, congratulations to you, Class of 2024 on your graduation. And thank you, University Vice Chancellor, and leaders, for having honored me so much today. I thank you very much.