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07 June 2021 | Story Dr Nitha Ramnath

A passion for evidence-based medicine and the notion of value in healthcare is what drives Dr Anchen Laubscher, our guest in the fifth episode of the Voices from the Free State podcast. Anchen is driven to ensure that healthcare is scientifically proven, of high quality, cost effective, and tailored to a patient’s needs.  

François van Schalkwyk and Keenan Carelse, UFS alumni leading the university’s United Kingdom Alumni Chapter, have put their voices together to produce and direct the podcast series.  Intended to reconnect alumni with the university and their university experience, the podcasts will be featured on the first Monday of every month, ending in November 2021.  Our featured alumni share and reflect on their experiences at the UFS, how it has shaped their lives, and relate why their ongoing association with the UFS is still relevant and important. The podcasts are authentic conversations – they provide an opportunity for the university to understand and learn about the experiences of its alumni and to celebrate the diversity and touchpoints that unite them.

 

 

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Our podcast guest

Anchen joined Netcare in 2007 as an aeromedical doctor and has been with the group for almost 14 years. As Group Medical Director of Netcare Ltd, Anchen is responsible for the strategic oversight and operational execution of all clinical and quality-related matters across the different divisions of Netcare. Leading a team of subject matter experts, Anchen oversees the group’s key deliverables related to the value of care, encompassing quality outcomes, patient safety, patient experience, and episode cost efficiency, with all components of ‘value’ digitally enabled and data driven.

Anchen is a member of the Hospital Association of South Africa (HASA) subcommittee for Clinical Quality and the South African Committee of Medical Deans (SACOMD) initiative, which was constituted to address the human resource dilemma specifically related to the training of doctors in South Africa. She is a Council member of the University of the Free State, where she also serves on the Senate and holds director appointments in the Mother and Child Academic Hospital (MACAH) Foundation, the My Walk My Soul collaboration between Netcare and Adcock-Ingram and the University of Cape Town Medical Centre Ltd.  Anchen played a pioneering leadership role in South Africa’s response to the 2014 global Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) outbreak, which continues in her role as Gold Command in Netcare and as member of various national committee and advisory structures related to the COVID-19 pandemic preparedness and response. For her role in the South African EVD response, she was recognised with an honorary award from the South African Military Health Services (SAMHS).

Clinically, Anchen continues to contribute to the specialty of emergency medicine, specifically pre-hospital and aeromedicine. She continues to be involved at her alma mater through ad hoc lecturing in electives, research support at GIBS, and participating in health-care courses and conferences such as the 2020 Healthcare Industry Update and Innovation Conference.

Stay tuned for episode six to be released on 5 July 2021.

For further information regarding the podcast series, or to propose other alumni guests, please email us at alumnipodcast@ufs.ac.za

Listen to all the Voices from the Free State podcasts.

News Archive

Game farming a lens to analyse challenges facing democratic SA – Dr Kamuti
2017-05-30

 Description: Dr Kamuti Tags: Dr Kamuti

Dr Tariro Kamuti, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre
for Africa Studies at the University of the Free State.
Photo: Rulanzen Martin

One of the challenges facing South Africa’s developing game farming policy is the fractured state in the governance of the private game farming sector, says Dr Tariro Kamuti.

Dr Kamuti, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Africa Studies (CAS) at the University of the Free State (UFS), was presenting a seminar on Wednesday 17 May 2017 under the topic, Private Wildlife Governance in a Context of Radical Uncertainty: Challenges of South Africa’s Developing Game Farming Policy, which takes material from his PhD. He received his PhD from both the Vrije University in Amsterdam and the UFS in 2016.

His presentation explored how the private game industry positions itself in accordance with existing agricultural and environmental regulations. It also investigated the state’s response to the challenge of competing needs over land and wildlife resources which is posed by the gaming sector. “The transformation of the institutional processes mediating governance of the private game farming sector has been a long and enduring arrangement emerging organically over time,” Dr Kamuti said.

Game farming links wildlife and agricultural sectors
“I decided on this topic to highlight that game farming links the wildlife sector (associated with conservation and tourism) and the agricultural sector. Both make use of land whose resources need to be sustainably utilised to meet a broad spectrum of needs for the diverse South African population.

“The continuous skewed ownership of land post-1994 justifies questioning of the role of the state in confronting challenges of social justice and transformation within the economy.”

“Game farming can thus be viewed as a lens through which to study the broad challenges facing a democratic South Africa, and to interrogate the regulatory and policy framework in the agricultural and wildlife sectors at their interface,” Dr Kamuti said.

Challenges facing game farming policies
The state alone does not apply itself to the regulation of private gaming as a sector. “There is no clear direction on the position of private game farming at the interface of environmental and agricultural regulations, hence game farmers take advantage of loopholes in these institutional arrangements to forge ahead,” Dr Kamuti said.

He further went on to say that the state lacked a coherent plan for the South African countryside, “as shown by the outstanding land restitution and labour tenant claims on privately owned land earmarked for wildlife production”.

The South African government was confronted with a context in which the status quo of the prosperity of the middle classes under neoliberal policies was pitted against the urgent need to improve the material well-being of the majority poor.  Unless such issues were addressed, this necessarily undermined democracy as a participatory social force, Dr Kamuti said.

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