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07 March 2023 | Story André Damons | Photo Reuben Maeko
Dr William Mhundwa
Prof Thabiso Mofokeng, Head of Department: Internal Medicine, and Dr Busiswa Bisiwe, Head of the Unit: Nephrology and Dr William Mhundwa’s (right) supervisor, congratulates him on his great achievement.

Dr William Mhundwa, Senior Registrar in the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of the Free State (UFS), has become the first candidate from the institution to be awarded the prestigious Suzman Medal as the top student in the 2022 examinations of the Fellowship of the College of Physicians (FCP).  

Candidates from all medical schools in the country as well as other African countries wrote this examination in January and July 2022. Dr Mhundwa came out on top and was awarded the medal by the Senate of the Colleges of Medicine of South Africa (CMSA), which oversees the examinations.  

“I congratulate Dr Mhundwa on his outstanding performance,” commented Prof Nicholas Pearce, Head of the School: Clinical Medicine at the UFS. According to him, this is a prestigious award, and given that it is the first time that a candidate from this university has been awarded this medal, it is extra special for us as a department, faculty, and institution. 

Dr Mhundwa was born in Harare, Zimbabwe, to subsistence farmers and is the eldest of four boys. He immigrated to South Africa nearly ten years ago and started studying medicine as a way to fulfil his parents’ dreams. He eventually found his calling in internal medicine, specifically nephrology (kidney disease), and would like to obtain further qualifications in this field at the university. 

 “My achievements are the result of dedication to teaching internal medicine consultants. I am indebted to the Free State Department of Health for the opportunity to train and work under them. I hope to see great academic achievements within this province,” says Dr Mhundwa. 

He will graduate in April 2023 with a Master of Medicine, cum laude. His thesis was about The Prevalence of Chronic Kidney Disease Among Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus Patients in Central South Africa

Dr Mhundwa believes “that kidney disease is a scourge in modern society.  Early diagnosis is necessary to prevent patients from requiring kidney transplants and dialysis and to improve the quality of life of my patients”.

Prof Thabiso Mofokeng, Head of Department: Internal Medicine, said, “This achievement represents the UFS’ high academic standards on national front. We hope this is the first of many.”

News Archive

Is milk really so well-known, asks UFS’s Prof. Osthoff
2011-03-17

Prof. Garry Osthoff
Photo: Stephen Collett

Prof. Garry Osthoff opened a whole new world of milk to the audience in his inaugural lecture, Milk: the well-known (?) food, in our Department of Microbial, Biochemical and Food Biotechnology of the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences.

Prof. Osthoff has done his research in protein chemistry, immuno-chemistry and enzymology at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in Pretoria and post-doctoral research at the Bowman-Grey School of Medicine, North Carolina, USA. That was instrumental in establishing food chemistry at the university.
 
He is involved in chemical aspects of food, with a focus on dairy science and technology. He is also involved in the research of cheese processing as well as milk evolution and concentrated on milk evolution in his lecture. Knowledge of milk from dairy animals alone does not provide all the explanations of milk as food.
 
Some aspects he highlighted in his lecture were that milk is the first food to be utilised by young mammals and that it is custom-designed for each species. “However, mankind is an opportunist and has found ways of easy access to food by the practice of agriculture, where plants as well as animals were employed or rather exploited,” he said.
 
The cow is the best-known milk producer, but environmental conditions forced man to select other animals. In spite of breeding selection, cattle seem not to have adapted to the most extreme conditions such as high altitudes with sub-freezing temperatures, deserts and marshes.
 
Prof. Osthoff said the consumption of the milk as an adult is not natural; neither is the consumption of milk across species. This practice of mankind may often have consequences, when signs of malnutrition or diseases are noticed. Two common problems are an allergy to milk and lactose intolerance.
 
Allergies are normally the result of an immune response of the consumer to the foreign proteins found in the milk. In some cases it might help to switch from one milk source to another, such as switching from cow’s milk to goat’s milk.
 
Prof. Osthoff said lactose intolerance – the inability of adult humans to digest lactose, the milk sugar – is natural, as adults lose that ability to digest lactose. The symptoms of the condition are stomach cramps and diarrhoea. This problem is mainly found in the warmer climates of the world. This could be an indication of early passive development of dairy technology. In these regions milk could not be stored in its fresh form, but in a fermented form, in which case the lactose was pre-digested by micro-organisms, and the human population never adapted to digesting lactose in adulthood.
 
According to Prof. Osthoff, it is basically the lactose in milk that has spurred dairy technology. Its fermentation has resulted in the development of yoghurts and all the cheeses that we know. In turn, the intolerance to lactose has spurred a further technological solution: lactose-free milk is currently produced by pre-digestion of lactose with enzymes.
 
It was realised that the milks and products from different species differed in quality aspects such as keeping properties and taste. It was also realised that the nutritional properties differed as well as their effects on health. One example is the mentioned allergy against cow’s milk proteins, which may be solved by the consumption of goat’s milk. The nutritional benefits and technological processing of milk aroused an interest in more information, and it was realised that the information gained from human milk and that of the few domesticated species do not provide a complete explanation of the properties of milk as food. Of the 250 species of milk which have been studied, only the milk of humans and a few domesticated dairy animals has been studied in detail.

Media Release
15 March 2011
Issued by: Lacea Loader
Director: Strategic Communication
Tel: 051 401 2584
Cell: 083 645 2454
E-mail: news@ufs.ac.za

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