Science, Medicine & Engineering
Landmark
Madeline Nyamwanza-Makonese
born 1945
The first Zimbabwean woman doctor
Landmark is level 2 of 4 in the Zimbabwe Hall of Fame: a first that opened a door, or the pre-eminent figure of their generation in this country. See how the levels work.
Why they are here
She graduated from the University of Rhodesia medical school in 1970, the first Black woman in the country to qualify as a doctor.
Madeline Nyamwanza-Makonese entered the medical school at the University of Rhodesia in the 1960s, when the university admitted very few Black students and almost no Black women, and qualified in 1970 as the first Black Zimbabwean woman to become a doctor.
The obstacle was not only the coursework. Rhodesian medicine was segregated in practice, the teaching hospitals treated Black patients in separate and poorer facilities, and a Black woman in a white coat was read by a good many colleagues and patients as a mistake. She practised anyway, went into paediatrics and public health, and worked in the district hospitals where most Zimbabweans actually receive care rather than in the private practice her qualification would have allowed.
After independence she was involved in the expansion of primary health care that took Zimbabwe, for a period in the 1980s, to among the best child health indicators in Africa — immunisation coverage above eighty per cent and a sharp fall in infant mortality, achieved mainly through rural clinics and village health workers.
Every Zimbabwean woman who has qualified in medicine since followed a path she established, and the medical school has honoured her as its first.
The obstacle was not only the coursework. Rhodesian medicine was segregated in practice, the teaching hospitals treated Black patients in separate and poorer facilities, and a Black woman in a white coat was read by a good many colleagues and patients as a mistake. She practised anyway, went into paediatrics and public health, and worked in the district hospitals where most Zimbabweans actually receive care rather than in the private practice her qualification would have allowed.
After independence she was involved in the expansion of primary health care that took Zimbabwe, for a period in the 1980s, to among the best child health indicators in Africa — immunisation coverage above eighty per cent and a sharp fall in infant mortality, achieved mainly through rural clinics and village health workers.
Every Zimbabwean woman who has qualified in medicine since followed a path she established, and the medical school has honoured her as its first.
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