Dr Deliwe Ngwezi is a clinician-scientist specialising in paediatrics. South Africa’s first black female paediatric cardiologist, she holds a master’s degree in paediatrics from the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, and a doctorate in paediatrics from the University of Alberta, Canada.

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She has a keen interest in understanding the causes of heart and other birth defects in children. In her clinical practice, she was often confronted with heartbroken families of children born with heart defects, wanting to know whether this was the result of something they had done, whether they could have prevented it, or whether it will reoccur in future pregnancies. With limited answers to these questions, she embarked on her doctoral research studies to find out more.

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Deliwe’s research applied geographic information systems to examine the role of environmental pollution from industrial air emissions as well as socioeconomic status in the development of heart defects. Her findings revealed that women living in regions with a high exposure to a combination of multiple pollutants, such as heavy metals, organic compounds, and gaseous emissions, as well as a low neighbourhood socioeconomic status were more likely to give birth to babies with heart defects. Moreover, her clinical fellowship in foetal cardiology during her doctoral studies equipped her with valuable knowledge on the natural evolution of certain complex heart defects during pregnancy and their progression after birth. As an extension of her doctoral studies, Deliwe also completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Canadian VIGOUR Center, where she examined pregnancy complications such as diabetes and hypertension as well as maternal and child health outcomes. 

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Through the non-profit Children’s Health and Environmental Research Institute-Afrika (CHERI-Afrika), she aims to pursue interdisciplinary research on the connection between environmental pollutant exposure, socioeconomic factors in women of childbearing age and adverse maternal and child health outcomes in Africa. In this way, she hopes to identify geographic similarities or differences across the continent.