Arne Von Delft MMed

Arne von Delft qualified as a medical doctor from Stellenbosch University in South Africa in 2006 and completed his internship years in East London in the Eastern Cape. He remained involved in a rural health promotion initiative that he co-founded as a medical student, Getting Rural Right, but ultimately decided to pursue a career in Stem Cell Research. He had just started specializing in Hematological Pathology when his wife, Dalene (also a doctor), was diagnosed with occupational pulmonary MDR-TB.

Arne experienced the horror of dealing with drug resistant TB, as a supporting husband and clinician, but also as a patient: he suffered through an episode of suspected primary pleural MDR-TB that fortunately resolved without treatment and is now thought to have latent infection. A subsequent attempt to treat this latent infection was discontinued after six weeks due to progressive fluoroquinolone-induced tendon damage with risk of Achilles tendon rupture.

Arne subsequently changed his field of specialization and is currently a registrar in Public Health Medicine (MMed) at the University of Cape Town under the employment of Western Cape Government Health. One of his key projects is to assist with the development and implementation of Catch & Match, an integrated model of community-based care, featuring an innovative mHealth solution linked to the Provincial Health Data Centre.