Management Award
SAHPRA wins at the NSTF-South32 Awards for exceptional management
From top left to right. SAHPRA executive committee: Gordon Mtakati, executive manager: human resources; Christelna Reynecke, COO; Regardt Gouws, CFO; Dr Boitumelo SemeteMakokotlela, CEO, and Portia Nkambule, CRO.
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MAGINE embarking on the role of CEO of a country’s health products regulatory authority and taking office just a couple of months before a global pandemic struck? That was the challenge placed before Dr Boitumelo Semete-Makokotlela, who joined the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA) in January 2020. “I had to remain calm amid all the storms and had to learn to become comfortable making decisions based on the facts I had at the time – mindful that the rate of new information available changed daily in the early days of the pandemic,” she says. “I leaned on the resilience I have learned in my efforts
NSTF-South32 Awards 2021/2022
as an amateur triathlete, knowing well that I had to keep going and remain resolute on decisions made, despite threats and attacks from political parties and civil society, both professionally and personally.” Testament to her drive and passion for getting technologies to the public, Semete-Makokotlela, as the head of SAHPRA, successfully led the authorisation of several Covid-19 diagnostic tests, vaccines, and therapies in an effort to ensure that the regulator is an enabler. To be able to implement these expeditiously, she had to champion collaboration with other regulators across the globe such as the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), European Medicines Agency, Health Canada,