“A learning experience like no other.” This is how Prof Petra Bester, director of the Africa Unit for Transdisciplinary Health Research (AUTHeR) at the North-West University (NWU), describes the unit’s exposure to the inner workings of the North West province’s efforts to combat the Covid-19 pandemic.
In the early days of the pandemic, AUTHeR embarked on a unique journey with the North West Department of Health (NWDoH) – a journey that highlighted the value of transdisciplinary research.
Prof Bester says various academics collaborated in what became known as the NWU/NWDoH Covid-19 task teams, namely the Epidemiology Task Team and the Technical Task Team.
Throughout April and May 2020, the Epidemiology Task Team calculated the projected impact of Covid-19 on North West-based health facilities. This enabled the deputy director general of the department to make informed decisions on allocating health resources.
“In parallel, the Technical Task Team proposed the optimisation of existing databases and a Covid-19 PowerApp solution in the management of bed availability, oxygen and personal protective equipment (PPE),” she says. This team also suggested screening and testing for people at the highest risk of contracting the virus.
AUTHeR’s involvement gave its staff a unique vantage point of the pandemic. “Being allowed into the behind-the-scenes chaos and the war-room-like urgency of the pandemic became a learning experience like none before.”
Prof Bester says this seemingly disorganised space emphasised the systemic complexities of our divided society and revealed multiple challenges, none with simple solutions.
“We found that agile health information systems and high-tech medical devices are meaningless in dysfunctional health systems,” she says.
“Health education initiatives to enable precautionary measures such as handwashing, physical distancing and cloth face masks also saw the rise of conspiracy theories, stigma and fear.
“Covid-19 again emphasised the existing burden of lifestyle diseases as the vulnerable were tucked away through isolation. It also magnified the inability to isolate in a single-room shack. We all saw first-hand how over-population, poor food environments, lack of shelter, structural poverty, unemployment and low literacy levels determine poor health outcomes,” Prof Bester adds.
“This was an echo from the Lalonde Report (1981) and the Ottawa Charter for health promotion (1986) that resounded only four decades later,” she says, referring to the first international reports on the influence of lifestyle and environmental factors on health.
Prof Bester says an unintended consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic was the validation of transdisciplinary health research.
AUTHeR is one of the first transdisciplinary research entities established globally. Its research includes the 16-year PURE-SA study, a longitudinal epidemiological research study in which the unit’s Prof Lanthé Kruger confirmed the uncontrolled chronic disease profile of North West communities as a complex and systemic challenge.
“PURE-SA led to over 140 national and international peer-reviewed publications, and to more than 80 postgraduate studies. It confirms that traditional biomedical research alone cannot address the enormous problems highlighted by the Covid-19 pandemic.”
With its transdisciplinary research capabilities, AUTHeR may well be ahead of its times, which, in these challenging days, could be just what the doctor ordered.
Prof Petra Bester.
