“If you have reached your dream, do something else.”
These words by Professor Bongani Mayosi have motivated many medical professionals across the country, according to one of the speakers at a memorial service in Port Elizabeth on Thursday night for the renowned cardiologist, who died last week.
The speaker, Nelson Mandela University dean of health sciences Prof Lungile Pepeta, was one of more than 100 of the city’s top medical professionals who gathered at the Lilitha College in Park Drive to pay their final respects to Mayosi.
Mayosi, 51, took his own life on Friday last week after suffering from depression, which fellow University of KwaZulu-Natal alumnus and Eastern Cape Independent Practitioners’ Association chief Dr Jeff Govender said was a leading cause in suicides of medical personnel.
“Fingers have been pointed but this must be avoided,” Govender said.
“Better support for medical professionals needs to be addressed and set up.”
Govender was one of the speakers at the memorial service organised by the Eastern Cape health department.
Mayosi’s former colleague and friend, Dr Ephraim Fuzani, said he had met him while attending St Johns College and then the University of KwaZulu-Natal medical school.
“He welcomed us with open arms,” Fuzani said.
“He built not only me but other doctors who were there at the same time.”
Highly regarded for his tenacity and as someone who worked tirelessly for the betterment of his community, Mayosi was an ambassador in all aspects of life, Fuzani said.
“He is still living in our hearts because he has touched us in many ways,” he said.
Pepeta, who knew Mayosi since 2006, said he had always been motivated by him and regarded him as a mentor.“He always said that if you have reached your dream then do something else [and] I can see [medical] teams across the country who have been motivated by him.”
Veteran obstetrician and family friend Dr Andile Maliza said South Africa had suffered a great loss.
“He was a brilliant person who would use his time wisely and do a lot for his community.
“He was only 51. He should not have died – it is up to us to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
Mayosi made international headlines last year when he and his team working with an international collaborative group identified a gene which, if mutated, causes arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (ARVC) – a genetic disorder that predisposes young people to cardiac arrest.
It had taken Mayosi 20 years and many failed attempts before making the potentially life-changing discovery.
“Discovery is new knowledge – next is to find a drug to combat [the mutated gene],” he said at the time.
Born in Mthatha, Mayosi completed a medical degree at what is now the Nelson R Mandela School of Medicine at the University of KwaZuluNatal, before moving to Port Elizabeth.Mayosi met his wife, Nonhlanhla, a dermatologist, in Durban. They moved to Port Elizabeth in 1990 and worked at Livingstone Hospital before moving on a few years later to Cape Town.
Following a stint as a registrar in Cape Town in the mid1990s, Mayosi took up a fellowship at Oxford University in the UK to complete a PhD.
It was there that his interest in cardiology and congenital heart disease flourished.
Mayosi returned to South Africa in 2001.
In 2006, at the age of 38, Mayosi became the first black person to be made professor and head of the department of medicine at Groote Schuur Hospital and the University of Cape Town.
During his tenure at both institutions, he had more than 168 articles published in peerreviewed journals.
He was awarded the Order of Mapungubwe (in silver) for his contribution to medical science in 2009.
In 2011, he received the National Research Foundation Award for Transforming the Science Cohort in South Africa.
Mayosi will be given a special provincial official funeral in Cape Town on Saturday.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has ordered that the national flag be flown at half-mast in the Western Cape on the day.
Mayosi is survived by his wife and two daughters.