When Prof Liesl Zühlke was told she had won a L’Oréal-Unesco Prize for Women in Science in January, she was speechless. “I didn’t tell people for a while because I couldn’t really believe it,” she says.
“They kept sending me e-mails because we had to plan to go to Paris in June. Every time I saw the e-mail, I had to remind myself it’s really true. It was like a dream.”
Zühlke was one of only five global laureates selected from 504 nominations across 89 countries. She was presented with the award at a ceremony at the Unesco headquarters in Paris on June 11.
For her a career in medicine had been a lifelong ambition. But it wasn’t always a smooth path.
“I just knew I had to do medicine. I said it even before I started school. I was fascinated by the body. I was fascinated by how all the things [in it] worked or didn’t work. I was fascinated by science,” she tells the FM.
Zühlke is a clinician-scientist and researcher and the vice-president of the South African Medical Research Council. She was recognised for her work on rheumatic heart disease. Her research unit is based at the Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital.
The antecedents of many diseases, she says, lie in childhood, and if you can alter it in childhood, you prevent the person from developing that disease, saving money and resources.
Rheumatic heart disease is caused by untreated strep throat infection. Zühlke says the disease is 100% preventable with early treatment.
“The antibiotic is just penicillin, and we know that there’s no documented resistance by strep to penicillin, so to treat it with that is a no-brainer.”
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), rheumatic heart disease affects an estimated 55-million people worldwide and claims about 360,000 lives each year — most of them in low- or middle-income countries. It most commonly occurs in childhood and can lead to death or lifelong disability.
People who live in overcrowded and poor living conditions are at greatest risk of developing the disease, says the WHO. In the case of serious disease, surgery may be required to repair or replace the heart valves. This is often not available in low-income countries.
Zühlke’s research was pivotal to the disease being recognised as not just a medical condition but one linked to poverty and inequality.
She grew up in a working-class family in Athlone on the Cape Flats. Her mother was a primary school teacher, her father a bricklayer and her grandmother a domestic worker. Her parents were extremely supportive of her decision to pursue a career in medicine.
It was a humble background but one with a “real sense that service and education were the way to go”, she says. “Nobody ever said it was too big a dream for a little girl from the Cape Flats. It wasn’t even a discussion. My family made active financial sacrifices to get me there and gave me every kind of support all the way,” she says.
Family has been an important part of her journey. She recalls walking down the streets of Mowbray as a youngster with her grandmother, looking up at the University of Cape Town (UCT), an institution of which she is now an integral part.
“My mom is in her 80s now, and I have two sisters with their own families. I’ve been surrounded by people who have been through the whole journey [with me],” she says.
As well as working at UCT, she is an alumnus. She completed her master’s degree in public health and obtained her PhD at the university.
Being there is not something she takes for granted. “I was one of the few who went to university from our extended family. It was all very new to be following that path. I knew no doctors who looked like me.”
Her oldest son is now also a doctor and her youngest a chemical engineering student. “All I’ve ever told them is that science is a fascinating place to be, and I’m glad they see that as well.”
Her advice to young people interested in a career in science and medicine? “Focus on the path, focus on the dream.
“Plan, pray and pass it forward. Find that inner strength, and when you get something done, make sure you pass it on. It’s really important.”
The Unesco award, she says, isn’t only for her. It belongs to every team she’s worked with, to the mentors who shaped her — especially the late Prof Bongani Mayosi — and to the family who never once let her believe the dream was out of reach.
Mayosi was the head of the faculty of health at UCT and died by suicide in 2018. UCT published a 157-page report, but it did not come to a consensus. But Zühlke remembers her old mentor fondly and hopes he would have been proud of her.
“I work across the globe now, in a way. It has been such an honour and privilege. So this is a team effort.”
Zühlke says careers in science and medicine are good ones for young people to pursue. She wants to be an example for young women across the continent. “It’s difficult, but there’s nothing worth doing that does not involve some difficulty.
“With a woman’s perspective you bring a different nuance into the space. You bring the compassion and the understanding as well as the science, the endeavour and the rigour.”
