Dr Anjuli Kaur
Meet Dr Anjuli Kaur, an Internal Medicine trainee at the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust with a clinical, academic, and leadership background across acute and chronic care.
Placement overview
My placement was based primarily at Inkosi Albert Luthuli Central Hospital (IALCH) in Durban and provided comprehensive exposure to respiratory medicine in a high-burden, resource-limited setting.
This placement enabled valuable comparison between respiratory disease management in South Africa and the UK, particularly in relation to resource availability, diagnostic pathways, and treatment prioritisation.
The strong academic culture, clinical tutorials and bedside teaching broadened my exposure to general medical and respiratory presentations and provided further insight into training structures and clinical education within the South African healthcare system.
Beyond IALCH, I visited other hospitals to gain a system-wide perspective. This experience highlighted differences in resource availability, patient-to-clinician ratios, and investigation timelines compared with the NHS.
Overall, this placement was an invaluable experience at an early stage of my training. It reinforced my interest in respiratory and global lung health, provided insight into managing chronic respiratory disease in high HIV and TB prevalence settings, and offered meaningful opportunities for cross-cultural clinical learning and collaboration
The strong academic culture, clinical tutorials and bedside teaching broadened my exposure to general medical and respiratory presentations and provided further insight into training structures and clinical education within the South African healthcare system.
Reflection
In my application, I outlined objectives focused on developing clinical insight into respiratory disease in high TB and HIV prevalence settings, understanding how health systems function with constrained resources, and gaining exposure to academic respiratory medicine to inform my future career in Respiratory and Intensive Care Medicine with a global health focus. The placement met and exceeded these objectives.
The placement has had a lasting impact on my clinical approach, reinforcing patient centred, equitable, and globally informed respiratory care, and has strengthened my commitment to a career integrating respiratory medicine, intensive care, and global lung health.
Dr Moin Uddin Mujeeb
Meet Dr Moin Uddin Mujeeb, an ST6 Respiratory Medicine trainee who did his oncology and lung transplant rotation at Royal Papworth Hospital.
Placement overview
My placement began in Durban in one of the Quaternary Hospitals called Albert Luthuli Hospital, this hospital had a small inpatient unit, clinics, bronchoscopy suite and weekly teaching.
My supervisor, Dr Khan, had ensured that we would have adequate exposure to a wide range of diseases, which largely included HIV and TB. The days started with clinic review of patients and then ward rounds; there was also a weekly session which involved EBUS or Bronchoscopy. I was actively involved and encouraged to take part in all these activities including history taking, examination, blood tests and bronchoscopy such as intubation and sedation.
There is a lot of opportunity to study and research post TB infections, and I was given the opportunity to visit the local CAPRISA Lab to get involved with the research side of things.
For the next week we were sent to the District General hospital and then the primary hospital. Going from a larger, better funded hospital to one that receives much less funding highlighted the lack of resources. At the end of the two weeks, I then attended the Pan African Thoracic Society Conference in Egypt, which brought together even more diversity in the disease and socio-economic burdens of Pulmonology healthcare.
Reflection
This placement helped me realise the value of a patient centred approach to healthcare and opened my eyes to healthcare sharing as an important way to bridge different approaches to medicine.
Although the South African community is burdened with TB and HIV, the healthcare and research teams have still been able to achieve amazing things and work to a very high standard.