Promoting the success of others

Honorary Award A steadfastly honest path

The man who led th e Covid advisory body from March became popular and trusted

By LYNETTE DICEY

● Leaders have an opportunity to provide their people with a sense of security,and to connect, motivate and inspire them. This yearthe SundayTimesTop 100Companies salutes professor Salim Abdool Karimwi th an honorary awardfor providing gu idance and inspirationto the nationthroughout the Covid-19 pandemic. The acknowledgement is inrecognition ofhis dedication, commitment and courage.

The pandemic placedthe clinicalinfectiousdiseases epidemiologistsquarely inth e public eye. Appointed in mid-March to lead the Ministerial Advisory Committee (MAC) advising the government on combati ng Covid-19, he hasbecomeafamiliar facein recent monthsduring livetelevised public briefingsdelivered inhischaracteristically calm and measured manner.

Hisability totranslate complexscience into easily understandable language resonated witha nationin ahigh stateof anxiety in the early days of the lockdown, and he quickly became a popularand, even more i mp ortantly,a trusted and credible figure.

Abdool Karimis nostranger topublic platforms or high-profile positions. He is a director of the Centre for the Aids ProgrammeofResearch inSA(Caprisa) and Caprisa professor of global health at Columbia University, New York.

Inaddition, heis anadjunct professorof immunologyandinfectious diseasesatHarvard University, an adjunct professor of medicine atCornell University andpro vicechancellor (research) at the University of Kwa Zulu - Natal .

Hehaspreviously servedaspresidentof the SA Medical Research Council.

He first came to the public’sattention t wo decades ago,when hewas oneof themost prominent scientists tospeak out against Aids denialist Thabo Mbeki,then SA’s president. As key leaders of the 2000 Internation-

ProfSalim Abdool Karim.

al Aids Conference inDurban, Abdool Karim and colleagues Jerry Coovadia and Malegapuru Makgoba were frequentlyin the public eye as aresult of their vocalrebuttals of this denialism .

Ministerial advisories, says Abdool Karim, consistofthreesections. Thefirstistypical ly a questionposed bythe ministerof health, the second consists of the scientific evidence andthethird istheadvisorycommittee ’s recommendation .

“Looking back,it’s clear almostall [th e MAC ’s] recommendations were followed, sometimesnot exactlybut insome shapeor form , ”hesays. However, as anadviser you are not responsible for all the decisions made by the government, he stresses.

“The reality is thateven scientists don’t always agree with each other all the time. Independently minded, knowledgeablescientists are not renowned for following the crowd. Disagreements, therefore, are not uncommon. As a memberof an advisory committee it’s importanttolisten toeveryone ’s diverse viewpoint and appreciate differences of opinion.”

Diversityof opinion,hebelieves, wasa strength ofthe MACon Covid-19,allowing it to provide “pretty good advice”.

When Abdool Karim is discussing the role of an adviserhe knowswhathe’s talking about. He sits onnumerousrespectedadvisory boards, including the WHO’s HIV Strategicand TechnicalAdvisoryCommittee and theWHO HIV/TB Taskforce.He ’schai r of the UNAids Scientific Expert Panel.

Rankedamongthe world’s most highly cited scientistsby the Web ofScience platform,Abdool Karimsays agood leaderis somebody who listens andkeeps an open mind beforemaking ajudgment andproviding away forward. Importantly, agood leader doesnot allowdifferences inopinion to lead to a situation of paralysis where no decisions are made. “I’ve used the Codesa negotiations approach of‘sufficient consensus’as a wayformovingforward inthemidstofuncertainty, ”he says.

The process followed by the MAC on Covid-19 includedthe submissionof constantly revised advisories, with additional input allowed at multiple stages.

“Thechallenge withthisepidemic isthat the evidence keeps changing. Covid-19 has resulted in a knowledge explosion. Ove r 70,000 articlesabout thediseasehave already been published in 10 months.”

What the pandemic has done, he says, is to democratisescience, making itmore accessible. Heis regularlycontacted by people from all walks of life writing to him about their analyses of the coronavirus data and interpretations of the epidemic. However, he says calls to“follow the science”ina bid to understandhowto handleCovid-19have placed a great burden on the discipline.

“Inthebeginningthere waslittleorno scientific evidence.We were goingon information and experiences from other diseases, like influenza.”

What Abdool Karim wouldlike to be remembered foris thathe alwaysput thepublic first,acknowledged uncertainty and what he did not know,maintained a steadfastly honest path and never sugar-coated the truth. He predicts that pandemics like Covid19 willbecome morefrequent occurrences, andare likelytobemore severe.Hopefully we ’ve learnt valuable lessons this time round which will stand us in good stead for the next one .

For now, AbdoolKarim ismorethancontentto focusonhis regularworkof HIVresearch and feed hisaddiction for sport in front of a television set.

He can still be found going for walks on Durban ’s beaches with his wife but you’ll have to look carefully for him.

In anattempt tohave anuninterrupted walk hehas taken towearing abaseball cap and sunglasses to disguisehimself, as well as, of course, a face mask.