The University of Cape Town (UCT) aspires to become a premier academic meeting point between South Africa, the rest of Africa and the world. Taking advantage of expanding global networks and our distinct vantage point in Africa, the University is committed, through innovative research and scholarship, to grapple with the key issues of our natural and social worlds. It aims to produce graduates whose qualifications are internationally recognised and locally applicable, underpinned by values of engaged citizenship and social justice.
The Faculty of Health Sciences at UCT has the oldest medical school in Southern Africa. Its core business is research in medical and allied fields, providing clinical service and teaching undergraduate and postgraduate students over a wide range of healthcare-related disciplines. Its reputation as an academic institution has steadily increased since inception as the Faculty of Medicine in 1912. Some famous advances in healthcare — including the world's first successful heart transplant in 1967 and the research that led to the development of the CAT scanner — have placed the faculty and Groote Schuur Hospital on the map as sophisticated, tertiary medicine facilities of international standing.
The Division of Clinical Pharmacology of the Department of Medicine has a strong research ethic and pursues basic, clinical and epidemiological research on a broad front. Academic staff participate in a number of regional, national, continental (African) and international research programmes and policy fora. The division provides a clinical service for improving inpatient and outpatient care in academic teaching hospitals and outreach primary healthcare facilities in the Western Cape, as well as responding to national and international queries on the rational use of medicines. The nature of the consultations varies widely, and includes management of treatment failure, adverse drug reactions, drug interactions, special risk groups and therapeutic drug monitoring. The ISO 17025 accredited analytical laboratory provides a therapeutic drug monitoring service and plays a key role in assaying samples from both clinical trials and small animal models. The major research programmes of the pharmacology division are focused on malaria, tuberculosis and HIV. The research in these fields is broad and encompasses drug discovery, pharmacokinetics, pharmacogenomics, clinical trials, pharmacoepidemiology, and pharmacoeconomic evaluation.
