Iqbal Haroon Master: researched and implemented new drugs and models of care for treating tuberculosis

Credit: Ikana Media, Johnson & Johnson “Our job is to do more than administer drugs; it’s to restore hope to people during their darkest hours.” No one quote can summarise any one person, but these words, spoken by Iqbal Haroon Master, provide some perspective into the humanity with which of one of South Africa’s most respected tuberculosis (TB) clinicians and researchers approached his work, which had a transformative effect in his home country. Master could easily have lost sight of medicine’s human element. In his role as the chief medical officer of one of South Africa’s busiest TB clinics he oversaw the treatment of countless patients for an infectious disease that, until the emergence of covid-19, claimed more lives each year than any other. KwaZulu-Natal province, where his hospital is located, has the highest burden of drug resistant TB in the country, and many of those living with TB also have HIV. Despite this, Master took a personal interest in every patient in …