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06 August 2025 | Story Lilitha Dingwayo | Photo Supplied
Mobi Readathon
Attending the MobiReadathon (left to right): Rasesemola Elias, Principal Librarian, Fezile Dabi District; Mzwandile Radebe, Principal Librarian, Thabo Mofutsanyana District Municipality; Jeannet Molopyane, Director, UFS Library and Information Services; Nomabhaso Ramugondo, Director, Free State Provincial Library Services; Elmari Kruger, Deputy Director, Motheo District Municipality; Larshan Naicker, Deputy Director, UFS Library and Information Services; Adele Bezuidenhout, Deputy Director, Fezile Dabi District Municipality; Henna Adendorff, Assistant Manager, Free State Provincial Library Services; and Thandi Gxabu, Librarian, Free State Provincial Library Services.

The University of the Free State (UFS) Department of Library and Information Services recently hosted the 2025 MobiReadathon competition, a digital reading initiative established by the City of Johannesburg Library Services. Now a national programme involving all nine provinces, the competition was introduced to Grade 8 high school learners in the Free State for the first time, with UFS playing a central role in supporting digital literacy and community empowerment.

Held at the UFS Sasol Library on 25 July 2025, the Free State leg of the 2025 MobiReadathon brought together 50 Grade 8 learners from across the province. The room buzzed with excitement as the young readers engaged in digital reading tasks and trivia challenges via mobile devices.

“I never liked reading, and because I am not fluent in English I thought I should start reading, and this initiative has been helpful for me,” said Bohlokwa Dikoetsing, a learner at Bodibeng Secondary School.

Tshepo Kgaola, also a participant, said the most exciting part of the competition was when his team won a voucher for reading after they created a story using artificial intelligence (AI).

“This initiative is part of our digital transformation agenda for public libraries,” said Nomabhaso (Rasby) Ramugondo, Director of the Free State Provincial Library Services. Ramugondo emphasised the issue of reading with understanding in South Africa, a priority that she hopes to see eradicated through programmes like the MobiReadathon. “We had asked Jeff Nyoka from the City of Johannesburg Library Services to come and do a presentation about digital literacy,” she explained. “It was then that a team of digital transformers was established to come up with initiatives like the Reja Buka Reading Festival that will help learners – and that is how the collaboration on the MobiReadathon came about in Free State.” 

“The essence of this collaboration is to promote reading development,” said Tebogo Msimango, Senior Librarian for E-learning Programmes at the City of Johannesburg. Just like Ramugondo, Msimango explains the need to promote digital reading due to the issue of learners not being able to read for meaning.

“The outcome I would like for this initiative is for learners to discover themselves and come to an understanding that with reading, one could go far,” Msimango said. “These collaborations also help with making the learners realise that they could also come into the university space, and a good example is the tour that they were taken on around the library.”

UFS Library Services played a pivotal role in facilitating the event, offering logistical support. As part of its community engagement initiatives, the university continues to collaborate on programmes that uplift local youth and promote literacy through innovation.

News Archive

Heart diseases a time bomb in Africa, says UFS expert
2010-05-17

 Prof. Francis Smit

There are a lot of cardiac problems in Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa is home to the largest population of rheumatic heart disease patients in the world and therefore hosts the largest rheumatic heart valve population in the world. They are more than one million, compared to 33 000 in the whole of the industrialised world, says Prof. Francis Smit, Head of the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of the Free State (UFS).

He delivered an inaugural lecture on the topic Cardiothoracic Surgery: Complex simplicity, or simple complexity?

“We are also sitting on a time bomb of ischemic heart disease with the WHO (World Health Organisation) estimating that CAD (coronary artery disease) will become the number-one killer in our region by 2020. HIV/Aids is expected to go down to number 7.”

Very little is done about it. There is neither a clear nor coordinated programme to address this expected epidemic and CAD is regarded as an expensive disease, confined to Caucasians in the industrialised world. “We are ignoring alarming statistics about incidences of adult obesity, diabetes and endemic hypertension in our black population and a rising incidence of coronary artery interventions and incidents in our indigenous population,” Prof. Smit says.

Outside South Africa – with 44 units – very few units (about seven) perform low volumes of basic cardiac surgery. The South African units at all academic institutions are under severe threat and about 70% of cardiac procedures are performed in the private sector.

He says the main challenge in Africa has become sustainability, which needs to be addressed through education. Cardiothoracic surgery must become part of everyday surgery in Africa through alternative education programmes. That will make this specialty relevant at all levels of healthcare and it must be involved in resource allocation to medicine in general and cardiothoracic surgery specifically.

The African surgeon should make the maximum impact at the lowest possible cost to as many people in a society as possible. “Our training in fields like intensive care and insight into pulmonology, gastroenterology and cardiology give us the possibility of expanding our roles in African medicine. We must also remember that we are trained physicians as well.

“Should people die or suffer tremendously while we can train a group of surgical specialists or retraining general surgeons to expand our impact on cardiothoracic disease in Africa using available technology maybe more creatively? We have made great progress in establishing an African School for Cardiothoracic Surgery.”

Prof. Smit also highlighted the role of the annual Hannes Meyer National Registrar Symposium that culminated in having an eight-strong international panel sponsored by the ICC of EACTS to present a scientific course as well as advanced surgical techniques in conjunction with the Hannes Meyer Symposium in 2010.

Prof. Smit says South Africa is fast becoming the driving force in cardiothoracic surgery in Africa. South Africa is the only country that has the knowledge, technology and skills base to act as the springboard for the development of cardiothoracic surgery in Africa.

South Africa, however, is experiencing its own problems. Mortality has doubled in the years from 1997 to 2005 and half the population in the Free State dies between 40 to 44 years of age.

“If we do not need health professionals to determine the quality and quantity of service delivery to the population and do not want to involve them in this process, we can get rid of them, but then the political leaders making that decision must accept responsibility for the clinical outcomes and life expectancies of their fellow citizens.

“We surely cannot expect to impose the same medical legal principles on professionals working in unsafe hospitals and who have complained and made authorities aware of these conditions than upon those working in functional institutions. Either fixes the institutions or indemnifies medical personnel working in these conditions and defends the decision publicly.

“Why do I have to choose the three out of four patients that cannot have a lifesaving operation and will have to die on their own while the system pretends to deliver treatment to all?”

Prof. Smit says developing a service package with guidelines in the public domain will go a long way towards addressing this issue. It is also about time that we have to admit that things are simply not the same. Standards are deteriorating and training outcomes are or will be affected.

The people who make decisions that affect healthcare service delivery and outcomes, the quality of training platforms and research, in a word, the future of South African medicine, firstly need rules and boundaries. He also suggested that maybe the government should develop health policy in the public domain and then outsource healthcare delivery to people who can actually deliver including thousands of experts employed but ignored by the State at present.

“It is time that we all have to accept our responsibilities at all levels… and act decisively on matters that will determine the quality and quantity of medical care for this and future generations in South Africa and Africa. Time is running out,” Prof. Smit says.
 

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