Innovative prof wins medic award

The head of the Red Cross War Memorial Children’’s Hospital, Heather Zar, has won an international award for the global impact that her treatment of children’s lung diseases has had.

Professor Zar and her colleagues at the Red Cross hospital changed the way children suspected of having TB are diagnosed. Instead of using a method that required starving a child for three days and pumping their stomach for sputum each day (phlegm from lungs), they designed a simple test conducted in minutes.

She also improved asthma treatment for poor children.

Zar is the first African and the first paediatrician to walk away with the World Health Lung Award, which is that is conferred by the American Thoracic Society.

Zar said there was a myth that children with suspected TB could not be tested because it was difficult to get sputum for testing from a child’’s lungs.

She worked out a method that uses a nebuliser to turn salty water into mist so children could inhale it. The salt mist loosens the phlegm in the lungs and enables a child or baby to cough it up.

The research showed that using this technique once was equivalent to using the unpleasant stomach pumping technique three days in a row.

“We have done training of how to use this technique in South America and Kenya.”

Zar noted that many children at Red Cross Children’’s Hospital could not afford spacers that are fitted to an asthma pump. After the child pushes the pump, a spacer holds the medicine until the child is ready to breathe it in.

As spacers were unaffordable, children were given tablets instead to treat asthma. The tablets had bad side-effects and were less effective treatment.

She used a 500 ml plastic cooldrink bottle to design a spacer.

“The first were made by a handyman at Red Cross Children’’s Hospital.

“They are widely used: In Kenya... South America, It’’s incredible.”

Zar said the most important parts of her life are her three children and family. “Our suppers are sacred time. We talk to each other. ”