Transforming Equitable Access to Liver Transplantation in South Africa: The Wits Model of Academic Innovation, Partnership and Public Benefit
Submitted by
University of the Witwatersrand
Summary of the Impact:
Over the past two decades, the University of the Witwatersrand has expanded equitable access to liver transplantation in South Africa through an academic health-system model centred on the Wits Donald Gordon Medical Centre (WDGMC), South Africa’s first not-for-profit private academic teaching hospital. The programme was built to address profound inequities in access to highly specialised care, including limited national transplant capacity, shortages of deceased donor organs, exclusionary HIV-related practice, and the absence of locally generated evidence for transplantation in African populations.