Serini Murugasen

Biography

Dr Serini Murugasen completed her undergraduate medical training at the University of Cape Town in 2006. During her medical degree, she held numerous national and international leadership positions including Liaison Officer to the World Health Organisations for the International Federations of Medical Students Associations, and received multiple awards for her contributions as a student leader. She was awarded a national Rhodes Scholarship to pursue postgraduate studies at the University of Oxford, which gave her the opportunity to specialise further in Public Health. After obtaining a Masters in Global Health Science (equivalent to a MPH) and a Masters by Research in the Department of Clinical Medicine, Dr Murugasen returned to South Africa in 2011 where she completed her basic clinical training and cemented her love for Paediatrics. She also spent 3 years in Australia, including working as a paediatric registrar, and expanded her skills set in a variety of clinical settings. She then returned to South Africa in 2018 to take up a position as a clinical research officer at Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital, where she oversaw the NeuroDEV study on the genetics of child development, with an emphasis on autism spectrum disorder (ASD), global developmental delay, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The study is an international collaboration between centres in South Africa, Kenya and the United States, and gave her opportunity to travel while melding her passion for clinical paediatrics and research. Towards the end of 2019, Dr Murugasen returned to her role as a paediatrics registrar at Tygerberg Hospital so that she could finish her clinical specialisation. Having attained Fellowship of the College of Paediatricians (South Africa), and having submitted her third Masters thesis for a Masters in Medicine (Paediatrics and Child Health) at Stellenbosch University, Dr Murugasen is now focusing on her special interest in paediatric neurology and neurodevelopment, which is an underserved area on the African continent. The prevalence of neurological disorders is much higher in Africa compared to other regions, with children being more severely impaired than their peers in the global North. However, African children have a relatively low level of access to comprehensive care across the lifespan which would address modifiable risk factors and prevention, treatment gaps and quality of life as well as premature mortality. Dr Murugasen has a passion for both clinical paediatrics and research and has worked towards the development of a better support system and smoother integration for registrars as they progress through their specialist training. She believes that academic clinicians at the interface between clinical medicine and locally-driven research are key in identifying emerging public health challenges and responding effectively to existing ones. She intends to work towards building sustainable clinical and research capacity in paediatric neurology and neurodevelopment across Africa, with the hope that the resources invested in health systems will better address child health in general.