Johannesburg: A South African Indian-origin radiographer has been elected as the president of the International Society of Radiographers and Radiological Technologists (ISRRT).
Dr Fawzia Peer, who has been a radiographer for three decades, is the Manager of the Department of Nuclear Medicine and also an honorary lecturer at the Albert Luthuli Central Hospital's Nuclear Medicine Department in Durban.
"I feel elated, but also really honoured and privileged to hold this prestigious position," said Peer, who was elected for the four-year-term during an ISRRT council meeting in Helsinki, Finland, as only the fourth woman and the second person from the African continent in the post.
Peer said she would pursue the organisation's objective of being the international liaison representative for Medical Radiation Technology, an area in nuclear medicine which involves the application of radioactive substances in the diagnosis and treatment of disease.
"The future of nuclear medicine is molecular imaging," Peer said.
"We were fortunate to have the first PET-CT scanner in the public sector in South Africa in 2006," she said.
Peer has previously been elected to the Radiography and Clinical Technology Board of the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HCPSA), where she served two terms of office on the executive committee as a representative of the Radiography sector.
