This week on Womanity-Women in Unity, in our series on women in medicine, Dr. Amaleya Goneos-Malka talks to Professor Laetitia Rispel who holds a South African Research Chair, entitled Research on the Health Workforce for Equity and Quality.

She is a Professor of Public Health at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. 

She is both a former Head of the Wits School of Public Health (2012-2017), and a former Head of the Gauteng Provincial Government Department of Health (2001-2006).

She is also a past president of the World Federation of Public Health Associations (2018-2020).

Prof Rispel shares some of the challenges and achievements along her journey to improve public health systems and shape health policy in post-apartheid South Africa.

For example, being inspired to go to university but lacking the means to do so, yet serendipitously, at a rubbish dump of all places, seeing a pamphlet to study nursing at university, all expenses paid.  

Tune in for more…