Man with a mission

Despite some setbacks, Keertan Dheda remains committed to the fight against TB, writes Tamar Kahn WHEN Keertan Dheda grew up in Durban’s Casbah suburb in the 1970s, dinner table conversations were dominated by the numerous doctors in his extended family. The son of a tailor and a housewife, he longed to join the ranks of the medical fraternity, driven by the noble idea of healing broken bodies.He realised his dream, qualifying as a doctor in the early 1990s and went to work at the King Edward Hospital in Durban, where he was confronted by a population riven by the disease of poverty: tuberculosis (TB) was rife and its evil twin HIV raged virtually unchecked, as the government refused to provide access to life-saving antiretroviral medicines. Since HIV weakens the immune system, the most common killer among these patients was TB.It was a turning point in his career, prompting his decision to specialise in respiratory medicine and propelling him along the path that led to the position...