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Dr Sidney Parsons, a senior researcher at CSIR Built Environment |
Dr Sidney Parsons, a senior researcher at CSIR Built Environment, was named the winner of the 2007 JD Roberts Award at a function held in Pretoria in July 2007.
The award was made to Parsons in recognition of his groundbreaking research into the crucial role of architectural engineering processes in improving the design of healthcare facilities, particularly to prevent the spread of airborne diseases such as tuberculosis (TB).
The annual JD Roberts Award is sponsored by Murray & Roberts and is held in partnership with the CSIR. The award, instituted by Murray & Roberts in the late 1970s in remembrance of one of the group's founding fathers, Dr J D 'Douglas' Roberts, recognises and promotes competitive and environmentally sustainable solutions to human dilemmas and encourages scientific research into technology that will enhance the quality of life of all South Africans.
Parsons's work focuses on seeking evidence-based interventions to minimise risk within healthcare facilities. By combining microbiology with architectural engineering through collaborative research with partners from the Medical Research Council (MRC), Harvard University and the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the USA, he has endeavored to reach a better understanding of the spread of airborne diseases such as TB. He was responsible for the design and validation of the Airborne Infection Research (AIR) Facility, launched in February 2005 at the Mpumalanga TB Hospital in Witbank.
South Africa faces one of the most devastating TB epidemics in the world. Currently, the World Health Organisation ranks South Africa second in the world in terms of TB incidence (or the number of cases per capita) and ninth in terms of the actual number of TB cases.
A serious complication of the TB problem in South Africa has been the emergence of multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB) in all nine provinces since the mid-eighties. "Patients receiving TB treatment usually become non-infectious in a few days; however, if treatment is interrupted prematurely, MDR-TB, a particularly serious form of the disease, may emerge. MDR-TB is much more difficult to treat and has also been associated with extraordinarily high mortality in HIV-infected patients," Parsons explains.
TB is an infectious disease transmitted from person to person by the airborne route, usually through coughing by a patient with active pulmonary TB. "Infectious droplet nuclei containing tubercle bacilli may remain suspended in the air for prolonged periods of time, leading to a high risk of infection in hospitals, clinics and other congregate settings with poor or little ventilation where susceptible populations, such as children and immune-suppressed individuals, may be accommodated," says Parsons.
A limiting factor to testing conventional defences against the spread of airborne TB is the inability to quantitatively culture human-generated airborne viruses and bacteria from the air under real-life conditions because of the low concentrations and competing environmental organisms. The AIR facility was designed to address this problem.
The culmination of a five-year research project by a collaborative team from the MRC, the CSIR, the CDC and Harvard University, the AIR facility involves extraction of infectious air from patient wards to exposure chambers housing guinea pigs, which serve as living quantitative samplers of human-generated TB. The CSIR and its collaborative partners have developed state-of-the-art systems for ventilation, heating and cooling, and electronic monitoring, which enable the study of MDR-TB transmission under a variety of environmental conditions in the AIR facility.
Parsons, as the engineering research member of the collaborating research team, was responsible for all architectural engineering aspects of the research behind the design, development, operation and, in part, the bio-aerosol sampling techniques.
The engineering sophistication of the facility allows for the development of scientific blue-prints for design of safer healthcare facilities. "The various engineering interventions necessary to curtail transmission of infection, such as ultraviolet germicidal irradiation (UVGI) and other electro/mechanical interventions, can now be tested and evaluated," Parsons explains.
This unique contribution to bio-aerosol science has since been recognised by the Department of Health and Human Services, the CDC and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health in the USA, in the form of a contract awarded to Harvard University to undertake various ground-breaking research projects at the facility over a period of five years, commencing in 2007.
Douglas Roberts was a doyen of the construction industry in South Africa, well known for his entrepreneurial flair and passion for seeking and trying new techniques and ways of doing things. It is in this spirit that the JD Roberts Award takes place annually, recognising talent and research within the CSIR.
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