With academia running through her veins, Dr Safura Abdool Karim was conferred a Doctor of Philosophy in Law during the UKZN’s Autumn Graduation ceremonies held recently.
Both her parents, Professors Quarraisha Abdool Karim and Salim Abdool Karim, obtained their PhDs at the then-University of Natal. Leading in HIV and Aids research, they also contributed heavily in the country’s Covid-19 policies and research globally.
Dr Abdool Karim said obtaining her doctorate was all part of their family legacy.
“We are a family of public health enthusiasts, both of my parents are epidemiologists who focus on infectious diseases, and my two siblings also work in health-related spaces: my sister is a health journalist and my brother did his honours in genomic sequencing,” said Dr Abdool Karim.
Having completed her LLM at Georgetown University, Washington, Dr Abdool Karim said she was substantially influenced to be supervised by UKZN’s Professor David McQuoid-Mason, the founder of South Africa’s Street Law programme and joined her parents’ alma mater to complete her PhD studies.
Her PhD thesis was entitled “Developing and Applying a Constitutional Right-Based Approach to the Regulation of the Modifiable Risk Factors for Non-Communicable Diseases (NCD’s) in South Africa”. Dr Abdool Karim aimed to use her research to develop content on healthcare and sufficient food rights to identify obligations that could support action on NCD prevention.
“My thesis seeks to develop an HR-based approach to NCDs under the rubric of the South African Constitution,” she said.
“Presently, my pathway to doing this is to help change the food landscape to make healthy eating more accessible to everyone and address the way corporations are damaging people’s health,” said Abdool Karim.
The abrupt shift in public health at the beginning of the pandemic also encouraged her to include communicable diseases in her research and this led to different organisations, including the Africa Centre for Disease Control seeking her input.
She has also been strongly involved in advocating for change, advising on issues and policies on Covid-19 vaccine equity.
“Much of the work I did on Covid-19 was very relevant to my PhD and to NCD’s work. This excitingly pushed me into new directions around developing a right to public health more broadly which I have continued to work on even after finishing my PhD,” said Dr Abdool Karim.
Currently a part-time academic and a newly minted practising advocate at the Bridge Group of Advocates, Abdool Karim said she was now hoping to take up a post-doctoral fellowship at the Oxford-Johns Hopkins Global Infectious Disease Ethics Collaborative later this year.
“I am looking forward to spending some time focusing on developing my scholarship as a full-time academic,” she said.