“Irreplaceable,” is how Dr Norbert Ndjeka, Department of Health Drug-Resistant TB, TB and HIV director, described Dr Iqbal Master, who succumbed to Covid-19 in Durban’s Shifa Hospital on a Friday evening in mid-January.
Master served for 26 years in the TB section of King Dinuzulu Hospital in Durban, 14 of those years as manager. He also served on various national and international advisory committees.
“We have lost, I think, the most experienced treater of drug-resistant TB, not only in South Africa but in the world,” said Dr Francesca Conradie, deputy president of the Southern African HIV Clinicians Society.
Professor Graeme Meintjes, an infectious diseases specialist at the University of Cape Town, called Master “a hero who led through his actions, and made a positive difference in the lives of tens of thousands of his patients”.