Helene-Mari van der Westhuizen
@helenemari.bsky.social
77 followers 93 following 11 posts
🇿🇦 Medical doctor & postdoctoral researcher based at Oxford University. Loves talking about TB, lectures in global health.
Posts Media Videos Starter Packs
Reposted by Helene-Mari van der Westhuizen
tbproof.bsky.social
In loving memory of Andile Madondile – a community leader who dedicated his life to raising awareness about TB & HIV. His passion lives on. Watch below to hear him speak about it. #EndTB
Reposted by Helene-Mari van der Westhuizen
aliciadwright.bsky.social
🆘🚨”South Africa is the beacon… We have many important collaborative works going on there…To cut them off, I just I don’t understand it. It’s self-destructive behavior.”- Dr. Harold Varmus, a professor of medicine at Cornell University, Nobel Prize in medicine
#Tuberculosis
#HIV
🧵↩️
madhupai.bsky.social
“We are at risk of missing out on a generation of scientists — because people will leave"

Devastating impact of Trump cuts on South African scientists

www.nytimes.com/2025/06/17/h... via @stephanienolen.bsky.social
South Africa Built a Medical Research Powerhouse. Trump Cuts Have Demolished It.
www.nytimes.com
Reposted by Helene-Mari van der Westhuizen
helenemari.bsky.social
Such a great paper! We are looking for a speaker for our symposium on new developments in TB IPC at the union conference - could this be of interest?
Reposted by Helene-Mari van der Westhuizen
tbproof.bsky.social
🔔 YO, LISTEN UP! 🔔

Did you know TB is still a thing? Yup, and it’s serious. That’s why 24 March is World TB Day—to spread awareness and step up the fight against this disease!

🔥 Wanna win R1500 cash? 🔥

Deadline: 24 March @ MIDNIGHT. One lucky winner gets the cash! 💰⏳
Reposted by Helene-Mari van der Westhuizen
Reposted by Helene-Mari van der Westhuizen
madhupai.bsky.social
Two wonderful global health scholars have made their global health books free to download

Bravo and thanks @seyeabimbola.bsky.social and
@thewrittenro.bsky.social

The Foreign Gaze:
www.editions.ird.fr/open_access_...

Rethinking Global Health:
taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-mon...
helenemari.bsky.social
With thanks to the @rhodestrust.bsky.social for the opportunity to do this work at @ox.ac.uk, and my supervisors Chris Butler, Sarah Tonkin-Crine Rodney Ehrlich and @trishgreenhalgh.bsky.social 📚 /6
helenemari.bsky.social
Here I looked at how Ubuntu as African-centric approach can help mitigate this - through shifting the focus to communal wellbeing instead of individual protection, using universal infection control measures instead of targeted ones, and thinking about how health workers communicate about IPC. 5/
helenemari.bsky.social
Next paper focusses on stigma: TB is a stigmatised disease because of its associations with poverty, HIV and its mortality. When only people who are ill with TB wear masks, masks become a symbol of TB and contribute to stigma. Yet they are important to prevent the spread of TB. 5/
helenemari.bsky.social
We look at whether proficiency at TB IPC helped with Covid-19 IPC and how conceptualisations of what mask-wearing means changed. 😷 4/
helenemari.bsky.social
It was a slow 14 year process. The organisation’s leader was actively involved in making sense of ☝️why TB IPC was important and ☝️what effective IPC entails. There were critical events, like a health worker falling ill with TB and opportunities to link TB IPC with other processes (eg. triage) 3/
helenemari.bsky.social
Hallo BlueSky! I’m excited to join the #TBsky #IDsky conversation - sharing some insights from my PhD. I used social science methods to understand how we can prevent the spread of TB.

Interested in how we can untangle stigma and mask-wearing? And what an exemplar case study shows? Read on!