The South African Military Health Services (SAMHS) is an important organ of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) in that it looks after the health and well-being of the country’s soldiers.
The annual SAMHS Academic Day started on Tuesday 19 September and saw great success.
Part of the SAMHS’s goal is to conduct academic research in the medical field to build capacity as part of force preparation in order to address current and future challenges. It is against this background that SAMHS hosted the annual event, allowing multidisciplinary health care professionals the opportunity for training, education, and development in military medicine, termed the SAMHS Academic Day.
This important initiative was presented in a form of a three-day seminar that was held from 19 to 21 September 2017 in the Big Willy Auditorium at The South African School of Armour.
People from various medical professions were invited and used this platform to share information applicable to national health in the quest to showcase recent research conducted by SAMHS members on military medicine and related topics. They further stimulated an intellectual debate on health-related matters through an interactive discussion. These discussion sessions were facilitated by the Surgeon General (SG) of the SANDF, Lieutenant General A P Sedibe.
The theme for this year’s SAMHS Academic Day was “Standard of Care: A health service delivery imperative”. A broad discussion on various topics, which included health intelligence, analysis of chemical weapons, body armour design, surgical and cancer case studies, clinical reasoning skills and determinants of career success, ethics and standard of care, were focal points at the seminar.
– JERETHA OOSTHUIZEN
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