Norbert Ndjeka trained as a doctor in Kinshasa, lost his first job in the Democratic Republic of Congo when Mobutu Sese Seko severed diplomatic ties with Belgium, and followed an unlikely lead to a rural South African clinic during apartheid.
He would go on to help turn the tide on South Africas drug-resistant TB epidemic pushing community-based care when the world said hospitalise, and fighting to bring the first new TB drug in half a century into South African clinics before it was commercially available here.
Sean Christie profiles the kid from Katanga, born on World TB Day, who ended up exactly where he was supposed to be.
Dr Norbert Ndjeka helped reshape how South Africa treats the deadliest forms of tuberculosis. He was also born on World TB Day. Tanya Pampalone tells us more intodays newsletter.Sign up.
Norbert Ndjeka was born on March 24 1965, in what is today Sankuru Province in the central part of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
It was only many years later that I realised that this was the World TB Day date. It cannot be a coincidence, can it? asks the man who, perhaps more than anyone else in South Africa, is associated with the management of tuberculosis TB, particularly the deadlier forms of this ancient disease.
