Harnessing resources for greater good
- Wits University
Chemicals and special pencils are never too far from this Wits Covid-19 Hero.
When Associate Professor Pradeep Kumar, who is assistant director of the Wits Advanced Drug Delivery Platform (WADDP) was issued his essential worker permit in the first days of lockdown in March 2020 his first thought was “wow, now we can do something”.
With a licence to be back on campus and back in his lab he started working out a formulation for an alcohol-based sanitiser that could be long-acting, gel based and kind to skin.
“We always have ethanol in the lab and I thought as a professor in pharmacy if I couldn’t make a sanitiser then that would be problem,” he says, with a chuckle. His experiment turned into full-blown operation in days. Demand for his hand sanitiser came from across his faculty and then also from the greater university community.
Even with limited capacity and supplies in a research lab setting, he at one point was making 16 litres in a morning, bottling the sanitiser then making sure they got out to where they were needed. He would end up making hundreds of litres in those early weeks of lockdown.
Kumar remembers that there was very real fear of the killer virus at that time and anxiety too when people couldn’t find any sanitiser anywhere. He says it made him especially happy to be able to pass on a few millilitres of hope and relief in the form of hand sanitiser back then.
“We made sure we went to the security guards twice a week to deliver enough sanitiser and we drove around with 200ml bottles and handed them out to policemen and women who were on duty – they would tell us that they were only given one small bottle a week,” he says.
He says that lockdown was about making a plan and just showing up. It was sourcing ethanol using the university networks, finding volunteers to help with bottling and distribution and just keeping at it. It points out too that no one said no when he asked for help and volunteers to build up a network of resilience.
“I do care about people and I do think that there is always something else we can do; we can always play some part,” it’s a personal ethos for him.
Kumar took the idea of network further when he joined several online initiatives focused on bringing the hive-mind to plotting solutions in a world radically changed by Covid-19. Some of these included the Ending Homelessness in a time of Coronavirus Challenge out of the United Kingdom that was a call to individuals with expertise in data science, public housing and public health to weigh in for solutions. He also took part in the MIT-Covid-19 hackathons, which focused on harnessing global expertise and grassroots, locally appropriate ideas and solutions to try to minimise the impact of the pandemic. He was also appointed a global rapporteur by the International Network for Government Science Advice.
Kumar’s focus was on food security and nutrition especially for the people on society’s margins who were further pushed to edge with the pandemic.
“I wanted to be of service on these challenges because even if just two people benefitted that’s enough,” he says.
“What I’ve learnt in the past two years is that science policy and science research can sometimes be far from the general public and we have to bring that closer together,” he says.
Kumar is passionate about science as solution; also about getting science to people to build stronger communities. It’s why he had no reservation in deciding to relocate from India to South Africa in 2010. Joining a research platform like WADPP was not just about prestige but about impact. Both he and his wife ended up completing their PhDs at Wits and then choosing to stay.
The couple and their six-year old love hiking the green lungs in Joburg, like the Wilds just a stone’s throw away from Wits Medical School. And when he’s not out walking or hiking he gets to commit some down-time to his “secret hobby” of pencil collecting. His collection stands at around 5000 pencils. Some of the pencils come with stories, some with personal history; some though he may use just to jot down his next ideas focused on solutions for the greater good.
About Wits Covid-19 Heroes
The Wits Heroes Series celebrates staff and students who went beyond the call of duty at the onset of Covid-19 in 2020. Wits Heroes were nominated by members of the Wits community. Discover other Heroes.