Breast Radiologist, Head of Breast Imaging Department | MITERA Hospital, Athens, Greece
Alexandra Athanasiou graduated from Athens University Medical School in 1997. She was resident in the Radiology Department of the University Hospital of Crete between 1997 and 2002. Immediately after completing her residency she moved to France, where she completed her subspecialty in Breast and Pelvic Imaging. She worked as Consultant Radiologist at Tenon and Necker Hospitals in Paris, France from 2002 to 2003 and at Gustave Roussy Cancer Institute in Villejuif, France from 2003 to 2005. In 2005 she started working as a Consultant Radiologist at Curie Cancer Institute in Paris, France. Simultaneously she completed a Master’s Degree in Bio-Engineering with special focus on Physics of Ultrasound at the ESPCI (Ecole Superieure de Physique et De Chimie), Institut Langevin in Paris, France. In 2007 she was board-certified for Oncologic Imaging (Concours des Praticiens Spécialistes de Centres de Lutte contre le Cancer). She worked as Consultant Radiologist at Curie Cancer Institute until 2014. She was principal investigator in two multi-centre clinical trials and co-investigator in five multi-centre clinical trials. In 2015, she moved to Athens, Greece, and was appointed Head of Breast Imaging Department, MITERA Hospital, the position that she currently holds.
She is a member of the Scientific Committee of the European Society of Breast Imaging (EUSOBI) and a member of the European Society of Radiology (ESR) e-Learning Subcommittee.She holds a Fellowship of ICIS (International Cancer Imaging Society) and is a permanent member of the Faculty of European School of Radiology (ESOR).She is the current Breast Section Editor for EURORAD and for Acta Radiologica, is the author of two book chapters on breast imaging and 42 indexed articles in international journals, and has given numerous lectures at international and Greek conferences.
Tracey graduated from the then University of Natal, Durban with an Honours Degree in Social Work in 1995. She started her career as a social worker for the Margate & District Child & Family Welfare Society. From there she moved on to project manage various AIDS programmes, focusing on the care and well-being of children. In 2003 Tracey graduated from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban with a Master of Social Work (Clinical Practice) and she also holds a post-graduate diploma in Marriage Guidance & Counselling.
From 2008 to 2012, as project manager, Tracey opened the Durban Branch of the Bigshoes Foundation. It was through this work that she cultivated an interest in paediatric palliative care. Since then Tracey has been involved in teaching and training doctors, nurses and social workers in paediatric palliative care and has designed course work material for this purpose. She also provides direct services to children and their families.
In January 2013 Tracey co-founded Umduduzi – Hospice Care for Children, an NPO set up to continue the work of Bigshoes in KZN. She is also an honorary lecturer in the Department of Paediatrics, UKZN Nelson Mandela Medical School.
Sharon Čačala, Surgeon, born and educated in New Zealand. Australasian fellowship (FRACS 1996) 1997-2001: Durban (Addington and Prince Mshiyemi Hospitals). 2002-2007: Auckland (NZ) Breast/Endocrine Surgery- public (Auckland and North Shore Hospitals) and private (Mercy Breast Clinic). NZ National Breast Cancer Screening Programme and Committee/Chairperson Auckland Breast Cancer Study Group. 2007-2018 Grey’s Hospital, Pietermaritzburg: HCU Breast/Endocrine and Head of Surgery. 2019-present: Ngwelezana Hospital. Committee- Durban Breast Cancer Forum. Involvement- local/ interprovincial breast cancer databases. BIGOSA from inauguration, former secretary. SA and international instructor DSTC and ATLS.
Dr Colleen Cox attained her MBBCh degree at the University of Witwatersrand in 1994 and her oncology qualification FC Rad Onc (SA) through the Colleges of Medicine in Cape Town in 2001. She has studied further in palliative medicine, having attained her PG Dip Pal Med through the University of Cape Town in 2016, and is currently enrolled in their MPhil Pal Med program. Colleen is a founding and board member of PALPRAC, the Association of Palliative Care Practitioners of SA, and has contributed to various South African palliative care guidelines.
Colleen practices as a palliative oncologist in Durban in the state, private and hospice sectors. Her approach is that of holistic patient- and family-centred care, and in particular how to facilitate hope and coping, and to improve quality of life, in the face of life-threatening illness.
Richard de Boer is a consultant Medical Oncologist at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Center (VCCC), Epworth-Freemason’s and St Vincent’s Private Hospital Melbourne, Australia. He completed his basic medical and oncology training at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and then in 1997 undertook a 3-year breast and lung cancer clinical research fellowship at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London, working with Professor Ian Smith. He returned to Melbourne in 2000 and since then has been a consultant medical oncologist working in both public and private practice. His primary breast cancer interests focus on endocrine therapy and mechanisms of resistance, treatment-induced bone loss and bone metastases, and molecular predictors of response/survival. He is actively involved in clinical research, and is the principal investigator in both local and international studies. He is a member of the Australian New Zealand Breast Cancer Trials Group, and until recently was the head of the Breast Trials Group of Cancer Trials Australia. He has authored articles appearing in journals such as the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Annals of Oncology, The Breast and British Journal of Cancer.
Brent Green graduated from the University of the Free State in 2003. After completing his community service, he returned and attained his Master’s Degree in Clinical Oncology in 2010.
He entered Private Practice shortly thereafter and has been serving the central South African community since.
Special interests include breast cancer, lymphoma and head-and-neck cancers.
Dr Nuala Healy is a consultant radiologist working at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, UK. She completed her undergraduate medical training at the National University of Ireland, Galway in 2006. Following two years of basic surgical training she completed a lab based M.D. entitled ‘Investigation of microRNA expression patterns as novel biomarkers for breast cancer’, part of which was undertaken at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, USA. During this time, she also completed a Masters in Clinical Education from the National University of Ireland, Galway. In 2012 she commenced her radiology training at St. James’ hospital, Dublin, Ireland and in 2016 went on to do a Breast Imaging fellowship at the Mater Hospital, Dublin, Ireland. In 2017 she moved to the Cambridge Breast Unit, Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, UK as a clinical fellow and was appointed as a breast and oncology radiologist in 2018.
Dr Healy has an interest in breast research and has presented research nationally and internationally, with multiple peer-reviewed published articles. She has recently been appointed as the incoming research lead for the British Society of Breast Radiology (BSBR).
Dr Krause is a Family Physician with a masters degree in Palliative Medicine and a postgraduate diploma in Health Professional education. She is currently a senior lecturer in the Department of Family Medicine and Public Health (University of Cape town) and convenor of the postgraduate diploma in Palliative Medicine. She assists in the 6th year lecturing and supervision during the rotation in Family Medicine. She also supervises Masters student in Palliative Medicine and supervises registrars of Family Medicine during their Palliative Medicine rotation. Clinically, Dr Krause has an honorary appointment at Groote Schuur hospital consulting in palliative care. In Groote Schuur Hospital she works alongside the oncology team doing combined ward rounds and consulting in palliative care across this 900-bed hospital. Dr Krause serves as a board member on the African Palliative Care Association and on Palprac, the South African Palliative Medicine practitioner’s association.
Dr Krause’s research interest is the strengthening and integration of Palliative Care practices in hospitals. Dr Krause is busy doing a PhD in the integration of palliative care in academic teaching hospitals within the Department of Family Medicine at UCT.
Dr Dimitri Liakos is a plastic and reconstructive surgeon practicing at Donald Gordon Medical Centre in Johannesburg and has a special interest in breast and reconstructive microsurgery.
Dr Liakos completed his undergraduate medical degree at the University of Pretoria in 2005. He qualified as a plastic and reconstructive surgeon from WITS University in 2014. In the same year he completed a Masters degree in plastic and reconstructive surgery.
Following his graduation, Dr Liakos completed a fellowship in advanced reconstructive microsurgery in a world-renowned unit in Taiwan. Furthermore he completed observerships in breast and head and neck reconstruction at MD Anderson medical center in Houston, USA and Brussels, Belgium.
Dr Memory Munodawafa holds a Masters in Clinical social work and a Doctorate in Psychiatry through to the University of Cape Town (UCT). She is a clinical and oncology social worker by training currently working in Private Practice in the southern suburbs of Cape Town. Memory works as part of an interdisciplinary team and mainly consults with professionals, families and individuals who are in need of mental health and oncology related psycho-social support.
She obtained her Masters in Clinical social worker and her PhD in Psychiatry through the University of Cape Town (UCT). Her PhD dissertation was entitled “Filling the Gap: Development and qualitative process evaluation of a task sharing psycho-social counselling intervention for perinatal depression in Khayelitsha”.
Work and research Interests: Development of psycho-social interventions, student and staff wellness, mental health in the workplace, oncology education and support in the workplace, trauma debriefing, grief and loss counselling, HIV and AIDS counselling and support, palliative care, psycho-oncology and family counselling.
Professor Bernardo Rapoport is a Medical Oncologist in private practice in Johannesburg, South Africa. He is an Extraordinary Professor, Department of Immunology, Faculty of Health Science, University of Pretoria.
In recent years Professor Rapoport has been involved in numerous pivotal trials of several groundbreaking therapies to treat various solid tumors, breast cancer, malignant melanoma, febrile neutropenia and CINV. As frequently invited speaker, Professor Rapoport has delivered more than a 150 lectures at local, regional and international conferences and symposia including ASCO, ESMO, MASCC, focus meetings and SASMO. He is also a frequently invited expert speaker by pharmaceutical companies at a local, regional and international level.
He is also a reviewer for several high impact scientific journals such as Lancet Oncology, Journal of Clinical Oncology, Annals of Oncology and Journal of Supportive Care in Cancer (JSCC). Professor Rapoport is currently a member of the editorial boards of various scientific journals such as ESMO Open, Frontiers in Oncology and JSCC, where he serves as Associate Editor. He is also lead guess editor for Frontiers in Pharmacology, and Frontiers in Immunology.
He has authored and co-authored various book chapters and has published more than 110 papers in peer reviewed journals including Lancet Oncology, Journal of Clinical Oncology, Annals of Oncology, Journal of Global Oncology, Cancer and Journal of Supportive Care in Cancer.
Professor Rapoport is a member of local, regional and the international Advisory Boards of several multinational pharmaceutical companies.
Professor Rapoport serves as a member of the MASCC/ESMO Antiemetic Guidelines Working Group, as well as the ESMO Febrile Neutropenia and G-CSF Guidelines Committees. He is also involved in developing guidelines in the management of immune-related adverse events associated with checkpoint inhibitors agents with MASCC.
Teresa Smit is the research manager at The Medical Oncology Centre of Rosebank. She received her oncology pharmacy training at the NHS hospitals, Great Britain, 1999-2001, (University of Sunderland) and completed her master’s degree in 2019 at NWU.
She is involved in the Research Unit of the clinic with investigator-initiated studies, as well as overseeing the sponsored clinical trial unit.
She is part of the team collecting research results, preparing, and writing abstracts and articles, and poster design for presentation of data at congresses.
Dr Margie Venter is a trained Clinical Oncologist and Palliative Medicine Specialist. After a decade in oncology, she now dedicates her clinical time solely to the field of palliative care. She did her postgraduate training in Palliative Medicine at UCT in 2016, and completed an advanced Palliative Medicine training course at Harvard Medical school in 2018/2019.
She runs a small private palliative care network, based in Stellenbosch, caring for patients whether in hospital, outpatient clinic or home. She volunteers her services at Stellenbosch Hospice as both clinician and board member. She is also co-founder and current chairman of PALPRAC, the Association of Palliative Care Practitioners of South Africa.
She has a special interest in serious illness communication. She is also driven by finding innovative solutions to expanding palliative care access, through health systems change and the use of technology.
Dalene van Jaarsveld specialised in Clinical pharmacology and worked in the Pharmacology Department at the University of the Free State until 2010. She then joined the Department of Clinical Haematology and it was during that period that she realised the immense palliative care needs of patients with life-threatening disease. Dalene completed her diploma in Palliative Care at UCT in 2012 and started with palliative care services at the HospitaI. She resigned from her post in 2016 and moved to Ireland for the year working as a Registrar in Palliative care at Kerry University Hospital for some practical experience. Dalene came back to Bloemfontein at the end of 2016 and has since then been working in palliative care as a lecturer at the University of the Free State and consulting patients and families with palliative care needs in Bloemfontein and surrounding areas. She also completed her MPhil in Palliative Care in 2018.
Currently, Dalene is working as a palliative care consultant at the Academic complex Universitas Hospital in Bloemfontein. Her aim is mainly the support of Covid positive patients and their family members. She's started with consultation services to all the Departments at the Hospital and is working with a team to develop palliative care referral pathways in the Free State.
Dr Judy Whittaker is a Histo/Cytopathologist in private practice in Cape Town. She is the Managing Pathologist of Lancet, Western Cape. Her expertise and diagnostic interests are in Gynaecological and Breast Histopathology and Cytopathology. She is a University of Cape Town graduate.