Fetal Medicine Specialist to head Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology
- L.R.
Adjunct Professor Hendrik Lombaard has been appointed Academic Head for the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology in the School of Clinical Medicine.
Adjunct Professor Hendrik Lombaard has been appointed Academic Head for the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology in the School of Clinical Medicine effective from 01 March 2017. Prof. Lombaard takes on the leadership role in addition to continuing as Head of Department: Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Rahima Moosa Mother and Child Hospital, where he was appointed Adjunct Professor University of Witwatersrand in 2015.
In his time at the Rahima Moosa Mother and Child Hospital, with the department delivering 13000 babies a month, Lombaard made significant strides in improving maternal care. He established an accredited Maternal and Fetal Medicine training unit, initiated invasive fetal medicine, established a second genetic counselling clinic and developed a close working relationship with the Department of Human Genetics of the NHLS.
“I am honoured to take up a leadership role in the School and hope to play a significant role in building the competency and collaboration of the Obstetrics and Gynecology staff across all three hospitals. Refining the quality of care delivered to the patients and improving the experience of patients when they have contact with the hospitals is the primary concern and opportunity. I plan to focus on staff development to improve outcomes for mothers,” says Prof. Lombaard.
In addition, he sees a great need for research in Obstetrics and Gynecology to be strengthened, particularly as the clinical setting is a context and data rich environment for research in a range of diverse topics from maternal death to the microbiome. Prof. Lombaard is also geared towards establishing and extending research collaboration with Leuven and the Erasmus University Medical Centre in Rotterdam and the University of Pretoria.
The son of a GP, Prof. Lombaard, chose to study in the health professions and graduated with his MBCHB from the University of Pretoria in 1997. He completed his internship at Jubilee Hospital in the Norwest and his community Service in Kgapane Hospital in Limpopo. In 2003 he completed his MMed from the University of Pretoria and became a Fellow of the South African College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology in the same year. After which he was appointed as Consultant at the Kalafong Hospital and Lecturer in Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Pretoria. During this time he had the opportunity to attend a presentation by the esteemed Prof. Peter Soothill from the University of Bristol, who discussed the future of fetal medicine. This presentation was the spark to his passion for fetal medicine.
In 2005 he was awarded a University of Bristol (UK) three months fellowship for training in fetal medicine and studied in the maternal and fetal unit at the St Michael’s Hospital fetal medicine under Prof Soothill. Returning to South Africa to again work at the Kalafong Hospital he was promoted to Senior Specialist and Senior Lecturer.
In 2007 he joined the Steve Biko Academic Hospital in Pretoria as a senior specialist and senior lecturer at the University of Pretoria. He began private practice as a Fetal Medicine Specialist in tandem in 2008. In 2011 he was invited by Katholieke Universiteit van Leuven in Belgium for a fellowship in training for advanced fetal interventions. On return, he took up the leadership of the Obstetrics Clinical Unit at the Steve Biko Academic Hospital and Senior Lecturer with the University Pretoria until 2015. He was appointed Adjunct Professor at the University of Pretoria in January 2015
Towards the end of 2015, Prof. Lombaard joined Wits as Head of Department for Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Rahima Moosa Mother and Child Hospital and was appointed Adjunct Professor at the University.
One of the interesting projects he has worked on with Wits School of Public Health on is a research project to better understand the experience of patients in the department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Rahima Moosa. With several media reports over the past few months on this issue of ill-treatment of patients, he is part of a group of concerned academics who would like to better understand the problem and implement appropriate strategies to improve this.
He has also been instrumental in piloting the extension of the academic teaching platform and has been involved with the initial GEMP 3 students going to Leratong Hospital during their Obstetrics rotation.
Prof. Lombaard has been registered with the HPCSA as a maternal and Fetal Medicine Specialist since 2007. He has several local society memberships and is a member of the International Society of Obstetric Medicine as well as the International Society of Ultrasound in Obstetrics and Gynecology. Recently he has been invited to take up the editorship of Clinical Obstetrics a South African perspective