Invited Speakers
Dr Busisiwe Ndlovu
Dr Ndlovu is employed as the Director for Non-Communicable Diseases, responsible for Chronic diseases, Disability & Rehabilitation, Geriatrics, Palliative care and Eye health care at the National Department of Health. Her work includes developing and reviewing regulations, policies, strategies and guidelines in collaboration with internal and external stakeholders. Dr Ndlovu is also responsible to co-ordinate the implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the following strategies – 1. National Strategic Plan for the prevention and Control of Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs-NSP), 2. National Cancer Strategic Framework (NCSF), 3. Framework and Strategy for Disability and Rehabilitation, 4. National Policy Framework and Strategy on Palliative care, 5. National Policy Framework and Strategy for older persons.
Dr Ndlovu has 35 years’ experience working in Primary and Occupational Health care. She has worked in different government entities including the South African Police Service, academic institutions as a Health & Wellness specialist, responsible for Disability, HIV/TB and medical surveillance. She has also worked in Non-Governmental Organisations and Humanitarian organisations with a focus on: HIV/AIDS, TB, STIs, Maternal and Child, Human milk banking and Disability and Palliative care.
Dr Suresh Kumar
Dr. Suresh Kumar is the Director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Building Country Capacity in Palliative Care and Long-Term Care, and the Course Director for the International Fellowship in Palliative Care. He also serves as the Director of ehospice, UK, and is the Founder Director of the Institute of Palliative Medicine. Active in the global palliative care movement for more than three decades. Dr. Kumar has been an Ashoka Global Fellow since 2011.
Dr. Kumar played a pivotal role in developing Kerala's renowned community-based palliative care system and has been involved in establishing similar initiatives across India and internationally. He has held academic positions at universities in the UK, Australia, and Thailand, contributing to the global advancement of palliative care.
His key areas of interest include developing palliative care systems in low- and middle-income countries, fostering community participation in care, and promoting the concept of Compassionate Communities.
Sr Joan Marston
Sr Joan Marston qualified with a degree in Nursing, Sociology and Social Anthropology from the University of Kwazulu-Natal and has been working in palliative care since 1989 at a local, national, and international level. With a special interest in paediatric palliative care (PPC) Joan first established Sunflower Children’s Hospice in Bloemfontein in 1998, before setting up a South African national paediatric palliative care (PPC) development programme within HPCA (now APCC), and then co-founding the International Children’s Palliative Care Network (ICPCN) in 2005, of which she was the first Chair and CEO. Joan has a deep interest in spirituality, culture and spiritual care of children.
Concerned about the lack of palliative care in humanitarian settings she then co-founded PallCHASE – Palliative Care in Humanitarian Aid Situations and Emergencies - and is on the Executive Committee leading on Advocacy. As the Vice-President of the Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Foundation Global Joan co-facilitates the EKRF South-Asian Fellowship programme. Joan teaches across a number of countries; and is an Honorary Consultant to the Center of Palliative Medicine at the Kharkiv National Medical University in Ukraine.
She is a Global Ambassador for the ICPCN; on the faculty of a number of international educational programmes; and still involved with Sunflower Children's Hospice.
Nokulinda Mkhize
Nokulinda Mkhize is a sangoma, author, speaker and mother of 4. She has been practicing as isangoma since 2008 and is an authority in the realms of African cultures, indigenous spiritual knowledge and cosmologies. She is also an accredited integral coach, qualified through the UCT Graduate School of Business.
Combining her experience as isangoma, academic knowledge, creativity and media expertise she has shared and taught extensively on ancestral, cultural and spiritual practices in the modern professional, personal and community contexts. This experience and expertise led to the publishing of her first book Ancestory: Ancient lessons for Modern Life in 2022. She pioneered the ever-evolving niche for izangoma, including using digital resources to expand the scope of practice of ubungoma.
Dr Julia Ambler
Dr Julia Ambler has been working in paediatric palliative care for the last 20 years, first in Oxford, UK, where she completed her diploma and then in Durban since 2009.
She co-founded Umduduzi – Hospice Care for Children in 2013, where she is the Clinical Director. She is currently the only doctor that is paid for paediatric palliative care in South Africa, working 10 hours a week at Inkosi Albert Luthuli Central Hospital. She is a sessional lecturer in the Departments of Paediatrics and Family Medicine, Nelson Mandela Medical School, University of KwaZulu-Natal and is the chairperson of The Association of Palliative Care Practitioners of South Africa (PALPRAC).
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Dr Aslam Dasoo
Dr Aslam Dasoo’s career spans almost four decades of professional medical practice, private enterprise and public policy. He is a director of companies and MD of Health Equity Partners, a healthcare advisory consultancy. After completing his medical training in 1986 at the Nelson R Mandela School of Medicine, UKZN, he worked in various state hospitals and in private practice. As a student, civic and labour activist he contributed to the development of the post-Apartheid national health policy for SA.
As policy director for the Representative Association of Medical Schemes (RAMS) led its restructuring and transformation into its international successor, the Board of Healthcare Funders of Southern Africa (BHF) in 1999.
He served as a member of the Medicine Pricing Committee, as Chairman of the Board of Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital and on the Board of Governors of the Road Accident Fund.
He is Chairman of the Board of the Association of Palliative Care Centres (formerly the Hospice and Palliative Care Association). He is National Convenor of the Progressive Health Forum, a national advocacy network of health professionals, clinicians, academics and scientists, health policy experts, health economists and health activists focused on the national healthcare system and its comprehensive reform.
He is the National Coordinator of the Steering Committee of the Universal Healthcare Access Coalition, a grouping of all major health professional associations, patient advocacy groups and institutions convened In September 2024 aligned to UHAC’s National Healthcare Reform Proposals.
Dr Michelle Meiring
Dr Michelle Meiring is a Palliative Care Paediatrician who has worked in this field for 20 years. She is the founder and CEO of Paedspal and works 20 hours a week for the organisation. Michelle’s other job is to convene the Post-Graduate Diploma in Paediatric Palliative Care at the University of Cape Town. She is an accomplished speaker and has presented at several local and international conferences.
She was also one of four editors of the latest edition of the Oxford Textbook on Palliative Care for Children. A long-standing child health and palliative care advocate since her “Paeds HIV-days”, Michelle is the immediate past chair and sits on the board of the national network for Children’s Palliative care known as PatchSA and has been involved at provincial and national levels in policy making in palliative care in South Africa.
Dr Craig Geoff Howes
Dr Geoff Howes first qualified with his medical degree from UCT. He further obtained a diploma in emergency medicine from the Colleges of Medicine of South Africa. He went on to acquire a post graduate certificate in palliative medicine and his post graduate diploma in palliative medicine from UCT. In 2024, Geoff completed a Master of Science with distinction with the University of Glasgow, focusing on vulnerable communities’ palliative care needs provision through healthcare worker education with a particular focus on South African queer communities at the end of life.
Aside from his general practice, Geoff is involved in local palliative care research and is actively involved in medical teaching through the University of the Cape Town and the American College of Surgeons. He is a board member of The Association of Palliative Care Practitioners of South Africa and a member of the executive committee of The Southern African Sexual Health Association.
Dr Barbara Matthews
Dr Barbara Matthews has lived and worked in the rural Eastern Cape since qualifying with her medical degree from UCT. Initially working in GP practice, she completed her MPhil in 2010 while working in a public private partnership inpatient palliative care unit at a secondary level hospital. Since leaving the hospital inpatient service she has worked for an Eastern Cape based hospice servicing a large geographical area and has been in private palliative care practice since 2022. Her practice includes in-person IDT patient care and hybrid remote IDTs from StillBay to East London
Outside of her palliative care work Barbara has a long association with an NGO working in early childhood development and literacy in vulnerable communities.
Tarryn Bell
Tarryn Bell is a Social Worker, adoptive and foster parent with a passion for Children’s Palliative Care. She obtained her Honours Degree in Social Work at Huguenot College through the University of South Africa in 2006. Since then, she has worked at various Child Protection organisations until moving to rural Zululand in 2011 to pursue a career in rural healthcare.
It was during her work as a hospital Social Worker in deep rural areas that she fell in love with Children’s Palliative Care and was exposed to the plight of orphaned and abandoned children with palliative needs in South Africa. Tarryn started her first non-profit company, Izandla ZeAfrika, in 2015 in the rural community of Mseleni, Northern KZN. She is the co-founder and manager of Butterfly Palliative Home with one facility in Ingwavuma and the other in Empangeni. They are the only in-patient children's hospices in KwaZulu-Natal.
Erin Das
Erin Das is an Advanced Practice Palliative Care Nurse, educator, and trainer with extensive experience in international palliative and healthcare settings.
She specializes in paediatric palliative care, health promotion, education and training, community healthcare, and nursing leadership. Erin is particularly passionate about nursing innovation and the development of new models to improve palliative care delivery. She also has expertise in grant writing, monitoring and evaluation, and medication administration for palliative care programmes.
She serves as Practice Lead at the Global Treehouse Foundation, Kidney Supportive Care Lead at Africa Healthcare Network, is an Executive Committee Member of PallCHASE, and a Board Member of Nairobi Hospice in Kenya.
Bonita Suckling
Bonita Suckling is the founder of the Rainbows and Smiles Foundation, a South African non-profit dedicated to supporting children with cancer and their families. She is the proud mother of Jed Brady Suckling (3 November 2004 – 11 July 2011), whose life and legacy continue to inspire her advocacy. She completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Paediatric Palliative Care in 2022—a transformative experience. Bonita also provides ongoing bereavement support for families navigating life after loss. In addition to her advocacy work, Bonita is a qualified fitness instructor and works for Virgin Active. She is a passionate endurance athlete, and this year marked her 8th Comrades Marathon—a testament to her resilience and commitment. Her lived experience has given her a profound understanding of the burden of complicated grief—knowledge she channels into every aspect of her work. She lives by the joyful mantra of her son Jed: “Let’s make today the funnest day ever!”—a reflection of the spirited way he embraced life.
Dr Stephen Carpenter
Dr Stephen Carpenter
MBBCH (Wits 1986)
M Phil (Palliative Med) ( UCT 2002)
M Phil (Pastoral theology) (St Augustine Catholic University 2007)
Stephen Carpenter has been a GP in private practice in Pinetown KZN, since 2018. He previously worked in the DOH from 1987, in primary health care in North West province. He worked in HIV and TB care in KZN from 2003 , at St Marys Hospital, Marianhilll and Don McKenzie TB hospital, Botha’s Hill. He is a volunteer doctor at the Usizo Lwethu clinic at the Denis Hurley centre in Durban, as well as the Hillcrest AIDS centre respite unit.
He has a special interest in providing palliative care to underserved populations. He is married to MaryAnn and they have 3 adult children and one grandchild
Dr Heidi Matisonn
Dr Heidi Matisonn trained as a moral and political philosopher and is employed as a Senior Lecturer in Bioethics in the Ethics Lab based in the Neuroscience Institute at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. She is also an honorary research associate at the University of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa.
The central theme of Heidi’s work is to think and enact care in the context of the academy. As a philosopher, this means conceptualising and understanding ‘care’ as an essential component of what makes us human. As an academic teacher, this means thinking deeply about how to structure a bioethics curriculum so that students have optimal opportunities for learning and development whilst also being supported to make sense of the ethics of our world. As a bioethicist, it means advocating for the integration of perspectives from care ethics into how we think about and address ethical challenges. It also means working alongside healthcare providers to understand the importance of care in building ethical resilience.
Dr Libby Sallnow (Virtual)
Dr Libby Sallnow is an Associate Professor and Head of Department of the Marie Curie Palliative Care Research Department at University College London. She works as a palliative medicine physician the community setting for the NHS in London, is a guest professor at the End-of-Life Care Research Group at the Vrije Universiteit in Belgium and an honorary consultant at the WHO collaborating centre in palliative care in Kerala, India. She has helped lead and develop the fields of new public health approaches to end-of-life care, compassionate communities and social approaches to death, dying and loss over the past two decades in the UK and internationally and the first author of the Lancet Commission on the Value of Death: bringing death back into life (2022).
Dr Christian Ntizimira (Virtual)
Dr Christian Ntizimira is the Executive Director of the African Center for Research on End-of-Life Care (ACREOL) and Faculty member of the Palliative Care Centre for Excellence in Research and Education (PalC), Singapore, and former City Manager, Kigali at the City Cancer Challenge Foundation. He is a Fulbright and Harvard Alumni from the Medical School, department of Global Health and Social Medicine. He is a physician trained in Rwanda at the College of Medicine and Health Sciences (CMHS), University of Rwanda. He is the Executive Secretary a.i of Rwanda Palliative Care & Hospice Organisation (RPCHO), a non-profit organization that advocates for access to pain control and palliative care in primary care. A Palliative Care Expert and Educator, Dr. Ntizimira pioneered the integration of end-of-life care into health services rendered to Rwandan patients with chronic illnesses in acute care and community settings. Through his programme, more than 1500 health care providers and community health workers have learned the risk factors of cancer & the concept of palliative care leading to a five-fold increase in the prescription of morphine, an essential pain medication. Dr. Ntizimira was a Researcher collaborator at Harvard Global Equity Initiative - Lancet Commission on Global Access to Pain Control and Palliative Care (GAPPCP).
Dr Kathryn Mannix (Virtual)
Dr Kathryn Mannix is a former palliative care consultant with over two decades of experience leading hospice services and NHS palliative care programmes. An expert in end-of-life care and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), she developed innovative training programmes to equip healthcare professionals with practical CBT skills, earning national recognition and grants.
Since retiring from clinical practice, she has become a best-selling author, speaker, and campaigner for better public understanding of dying, with her books With the End in Mind and Listen gaining international acclaim. Kathryn regularly contributes to media discussions, promotes compassionate end-of-life care, and champions the de-medicalisation of dying. Kathryn lives in the Northumbrian countryside with her husband and a small flock of hens.
Image: Darren Irwin
Dr Megan Doherty (Virtual)
Dr Megan Doherty recently joined the World Health Organization (WHO) as a consultant for palliative care and is based in Geneva. She is a palliative medicine physician, originally from Ottawa, Canada.
Throughout her career she has worked in a wide variety of settings globally, developing clinical palliative care services and training programs. While serving on the executive committee of PallCHASE, she worked to establish models of palliative care suitable for humanitarian settings in Asia and Africa. She is passionate about developing tools and guidelines in palliative care which can enhance the quality of care and reduce suffering.