The UWC Physiotherapy Department is proud to be hosting Prof. Lena Nilsson-Wikmar from Karolinska Institutet (KI) as part of a collaborative project Prof. Julie Phillips and Conran Joseph (at Stellenbosch University). Prof Lena’s visit is made possible with the UCDG funding that Julie obtained. The project aims to contribute to the global map of traumatic spinal cord epidemiology using a prospective, population-based approach to determine the incidence rate, the main causes, injury characteristics of survivors and the mortality rate in several African countries (South Africa, Botswana, Zambia, Namibia, Rwanda, Kenya and Uganda).

The project team will travel to Namibia later this month, where they will meet with the PhD student who is planning to determine the epidemiology of TSCI in Khomas region in Namibia. Her pilot study is commencing mid-February and this meeting will be used to iron out the logistics of the data collection. Another collaborator from KI, Prof Claes Hultling, has shown interest in our project and will hopefully join and meet with us in Namibia too.

In addition to the PhD student in Namibia, Prof. Lena is also jointly supervising PhD candidates with Prof. Philips at the University of Rwanda and another at UWC.