Currently serves as one of the Hepatologists at WDGMC. He completed his gastroenterology training at Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic hospital in 2014 and then worked with Prof Ernie Song for a further 18 months in the Hepatology clinic at WDGMC. His current interests include Autoimmune Hepatitis and Portal hypertension and its complications in the sub-saharan setting and transplant hepatology.

Founder and Chairman of the Gastroenterology Foundation of SA and a member of SAGES council.

Following his graduation from the University of the Witwatersrand medical school in Johannesburg South Africa in 1979 he completed his fellowship with the College of Physicians and joined the Liver Unit of the National Institutes of Health in Washington DC where he spent a number of years researching the antiviral therapy of Hepaitis B and C viruses. This was followed by GI Fellowships at Georgetown in Washington DC and Cornell Hospital in New York City and a visiting lecturership at the Prince of Wales hospital in Hong Kong. He returned to SA in 1991 and is presently a Gastroenterologist in Private practice in Johannesburg. He is actively involved in the CME of GI/Hepatology fellows, post graduate fellows and gastroenterologists and hepatologists in private practice.

Mashiko is a subspecialist in gastroenterology. She earned her MBChB and FCP at the University of KwaZulu-Natal before joining the University of Cape Town (UCT) in 2005. She pursued a PhD at Brown University (2009-2011) focusing on hepatitis B and liver cancer, later completing a postdoctoral fellowship in cancer immunology at Oxford University (2015-2018).

She became the first female appointed as the Head of Medical Gastroenterology at UCT/Groote Schuur Hospital in 2018 and later the first female Chair and Head of Medicine in 2024. Actively engaged in education and research, she has published extensively and supervises postgraduate projects on Helicobacter pylori infection. She also holds leadership roles in multiple medical societies, including being the current president of the African Helicobacter and Microbiota Study Group. Recognized for her contributions, she has received numerous prestigious awards.

Managing Partner
Van Hulsteyns Attorneys
Bachelor of Arts (BA Law), University of the Witwatersrand, Bachelor of Laws (LLB), University of the Witwatersrand Member of the Law Society of South Africa

Abrahams & Gross Criminal Law, Family Law, Divorce and Matrimonial Law, BProc; Cert. Advanced Corporate and Securities Law – University of the Orange Free State & UNISA

Head of Gastroenterology at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital (Wits).

Prof Reid Ally graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand with his FCP in 1986. He was appointed adjunct Professor of Medicine in 2001. He is the current Head of Gastroenterology (Wits), Principal Physician and Head of the Medical Unit at the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital. He is the Director of the African Institute of Digestive Disease and Past President of the South African Gastroenterology Society (SAGES)

His mission is to promote Gastroenterology as a dynamic/scientific Subspecialty especially to the younger physicians and to improve relations/needs between academic and private Gastroenterologist. He has a special interest in maintaining the SAADD as a centre for training in Gastroenterology within Sub Saharan Africa and encouraging industry/R+D participations.

Professor Jake Krige is the head of the HPB Surgery and Surgical Gastroenterology units at Groote Schuur Hospital which is a major referral centre for HPB and GI surgery in Southern Africa. He is the editor of the South African Journal of Surgery, has served on the editorial board of seven journals and is a member of eight international and South African surgical societies. In 2002 he received the prestigious University of Cape Town Distinguished Teacher Award. He has been an invited speaker at surgical symposia in England, USA, Australia, France, Egypt, Greece, Israel, Japan, China, Sweden, India and the Czech Republic and has presented scientific papers at international meetings in England, USA, Germany, France, Italy, Australia, Holland, Hong Kong, Egypt, Greece and Spain. He is the author or co-author of 56 invited book chapters, 175 original peer-reviewed articles, 56 editorials and invited commentaries and 210 peer-reviewed published conference papers. Among his published works are 3 citation classics.

President of the Hepato-Pancreato-Biliary Association of South Africa (HPBASA) and Head of HPB Surgery at the Wits University Donald Gordon Medical Centre.

Professor Jose Ramos was born in Mozambique and immigrated to South Africa in 1963. He graduated from University of the Witwatersrand with an MBBCh and obtained the FRCS Primary at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow in 1985 and before training as a surgeon at the Johannesburg Hospital from 1986 to 1991. He obtained an FCS(SA) in 1991. He was then a consultant and later unit head at the Johannesburg Hospital from 1992 to 2001. During this time he was head of HPB Surgery and joint head of Surgical Gastroenterology. He attained sub-specialty registration as a Surgical Gastroenterologist in 1995. He did postgraduate fellowship training in Los Angeles, Rennes and Paris, having been awarded the Michael and Janie Miller Fellowship and later the Hoechst-Marrion-Roussel Fellowship. He has been in full-time private practice since 2001 first at the Linksfield Park Clinic and then from 2006 at the University of the Witwatersrand Donald Gordon Medical Centre. He is a Senior Lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand and an Honourary Consultant at the Johannesburg Hospital. He has been associated with the Dept of Surgery, University of the Witwatersrand since 1992 as Lecturer and Senior Lecturer (Honorary). His medical interests are surgical gastroenterology and HPB surgery. In May 2010 he was promoted to Adjunct Professor by the University of the Witwatersrand.

Professor and Head of the Division of Gastroenterology, University of Cape Town, since January 2011. He completed his undergraduate training at Aberdeen University, Scotland followed by General Surgery training occurred in the Royal Air Force whilst on a short service commission and later at Aberdeen University. He spent two years as Fellow in Surgical Nutrition at Harvard and was awarded ChM thesis on Indirect Calorimetry in surgical patients. A surgical appointment at University of Natal followed and he spent the next twenty-two years at this institution working in its affiliated teaching hospitals. Initially conducting research in trauma and subsequently in surgical aspects of gastroenterology. He established a Surgical Gastroenterology Unit at the now University of KwaZulu Natal in 2005 and continued to develop subspecialty surgery and the infrastructure to support it. He has special expertise in laparoscopic and flexible endoscopy in particular ERCP with periods of specialised training at Cape Town and at Duke University during an American College of Surgeons International Scholarship in 1993.

Previous appointments at UKZN:
Academic Head Surgical Gastroenterology UKZN 2006. Professor of Surgery, Nelson R Mandela School of Medicine, College of Health Sciences, UKZN. 2002
Principal Specialist, HOD, Addington Hospital UKZN, 1999.
Associate Professor, Senior Consultant Surgeon, Addington Hospital, UKZN 1993.
Specialist and Senior Specialist Surgeon 1987 – 1993 King Edward VII Hospital, UN.


Professor Thomson is involved in the administration of post graduate research and acts as an external examiner. He is a Past President of SASES, SRS, SAGES, WGO Tele-education project leader, College of Surgeons of the CMSA; Examiner, Council Member, Past Secretary and Senator.

Professor Kew was born in South Africa in 1939 and qualifed in Medicine at the University of the Witwatersrand in December 1961.

After completing his internship in the Johannesburg Teaching Hospital complex, he was appointed as a registrar in medicine in the same complex, serving in the unit of Professor Harry Seftel. After passing the F.C.P (SA) and the M.R.C.P examinations of the Royal College of Physicians of London and completing his medical registrarship, he was appointed as a physician in the Medical Unit of the Johannesburg General Hospital Complex, a position he occupied until his retirement at the age of 68 years. Thereafter he continued in an honorary position until the present time. During the course of his post graduate career, he spent two years as Fogarty Scientist at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, U.S.A.

Professor Kew’s research has involved mainly diseases in Black Africans, but particularly cancer of the liver, which occurs with higher frequency in the Black African population. He is the author of more than 400 articles in Medical and Scientifc articles in Medical and Scientifc journals and books.

Professor Michael Kew is currently Emeritus Professor and Honorary Professor of the University of the Witwatersrand and Honorary Professor in the Department of Medicine at the Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town. He spent his career as a physician and hepatologist in Johannesburg (apart from short periods at the Royal Free Hospital in London and the National Institute of Health in Bethesda). Apart from his clinical and teaching duties, Professor Kew was actively involved in research. His early research interest was in heat stroke in the gold mining industry in the Transvaal, but his lifelong research interest was in hepatocellular carcinoma, a devastating cancer of the liver which occurs with great frequency in the sub-Saharan Black African population. He has written a text book of hepatocellular carcinoma as it occurs in the Black African and has written approximately 75 chapters on the tumour in books devoted to the diseases of the liver. He is the author of a great many articles in medical journals on the results of his research into cancer of the liver in the Black African.

Geoffrey Dusheiko, FCP(SA) FRCS, is Emeritus Professor of Medicine at the Royal Free Hospital and University College London School of Medicine and Consultant Hepatologist at Kings College Hospital London, in London, UK.

Eduard Jonas MB, ChB (Pret), MMed (Stell), FCS (SA), PhD (Karolinska Institutet) and became a Fellow of the South African College of Surgeons in 1995 and obtaining a MMed in general surgery.

Leolin Katsidzira is in private practice in Harare. He is the current President of the National Physicians Association of Zimbabwe, and a council member of the East, Central and Southern Africa College of Physicians (ECSACOP), where he chairs the examinations committee.

Anna Kramvis, BSc Hons, PhD, is Research Professor and Director of the Hepatitis Virus Diversity Research Unit (HVDRU), a University-recognized research entity.

Wendy Spearman is Head of the Division of Hepatology, Department of Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Cape Town and Groote Schuur Hospital. She is Head of the Liver and Liver Transplant clinics at Groote Schuur Hospital.

Gill Watermeyer, Associate Professor of Medicine, Consultant Physician and Gastroenterologist, Division of Gastroenterology at Groote Schuur Hospital, Senior Lecturer, University of Cape Town. MBChB (UCT), FCP (SA), Cert Gastroenterol (CMSA) MPH (with distinction).