Centre for Rural Health

Professor Refiloe Masekele

Professor Refiloe Masekela is a Pediatric Pulmonologist and current Head of Department of Paediatrics and Child Health at the University of KwaZulu Natal. She is also an Honorary Visiting Professor in the Centre for Genomics and Child Health at the Queen Mary University London, UK. She obtained her undergraduate medical degree at Witwatersrand University, and completed her specialist Paediatrics training at the University of Pretoria. She then completed her fellowship in Paediatric Pulmonology at the Catholic University in Leuven, Belgium and the University of Pretoria. She has experience in research over the past 13 years and is an NRF (C3) rated researcher having published over 60 publication in peer-reviewed journals and has co-authored 4 book chapters on paediatrics respiratory diseases. Professor Masekela is a nationally and internationally recognized expert in her field having held various leadership positions in local and international thoracic societies. Her research scientific career has focused on lung diseases in children. She has recently been appointed by the Minister of Health to the National Perinatal Mortality and Morbidity Committee.
She is the Vice-chairperson on the Pan African Thoracic Society (PATS). As the Vice President of the Pan African Thoracic Society, part of the mission is to highlight issues around lung health in Africa and to guide policy in various countries in the continent. Prof Masekela is the current Director of the American Thoracic Society (ATS) MECOR Africa program. The MECOR program is a research methodology program run by the Pan African Thoracic Society, which provides training on operational and clinical lung research for trainees from all over Africa and has trained over 450 trainees from over 20 countries. She is also a group member of the ATS Pediatric Global Health Group. Through PATS MECOR, she developed the African Women in Research Mentorship Program. She has an interest in asthma and allergies in children. She is a local principal investigator for an NIHR £2 million funded multicentre study Asthma in Children in Africa (ACACIA) which will study 3000 children in Durban in collaboration with Professor J Grigg (UK Principal investigator) at the Queen Mary University London. She has been invited to international meetings to present at symposia/plenary session on asthma in Africa. She is currently the PI of a project collecting data for inclusion in the Global Asthma Network in 3000 children on the prevalence asthma and allergies in South Africa. She has co-authored a chapter in the Global Asthma Report in 2018. She is also a Principal author for the South African Paediatric Asthma Guidelines, published 2018. She is a past president and executive member of the National Asthma Education Program, an advocacy group which disseminates educational training and community education on asthma.
Prof Masekela's other research focus is in lung physiological testing, particularly lung function testing in children and the determination of normative lung reference equations in African children and adults. She is the Principal investigator of the Paediatric and Adult African Spirometry (PAAS Study) which is a collaborative project whose aim is to develop lung reference equations for Africans. The first publication PAAS1 on pan-African data African specific reference equations has been published and gives guidance as to which reference equations to use in African populations and a prospective study (PAASII) has been published and has provided guidance of appropriate reference equations for spirometry in various ethnic groups in South Africa. She is also the African representative of the European Respiratory Society Global Lung Initiative (GLI) Network of Clinical Research Collaboration committee. She also holds the position of Director of Spirometry for the Pan African Thoracic Society. She was the principal author of a publication on spirometry testing methodology in South African children, a reference guide used in many African countries.
As the Head of Department of Paediatrics at UKZN over the past 5 years, she has mentored and graduated 15 Masters/MMedSci students. She is passionate about education and has obtained over R14 million in grants to support training in paediatric and Paediatric-sub specialities for both South African and African students via the African Paediatric Fellowship Program. She is also the secretary of the College of Paediatricians of South Afric