13/08/2026
MEET THE SOUTH AFRICAN PHARMACIST WHO JUST MADE HISTORY 🇿🇦💊🌍
Professor Yahya Choonara has spent years working on something most of us will hopefully never have to think about: finding better ways to get life-saving medicines to exactly where they are needed in the human body. 🔬❤️
Now the Wits University scientist has achieved a remarkable South African first.
Prof Choonara has become **the first pharmacist in South Africa to receive an A-rating from the National Research Foundation (NRF)**, recognition reserved for researchers regarded by their international peers as leaders in their fields. 🏆🇿🇦
And behind that rating is an extraordinary body of work.
As Director of the **Wits Advanced Drug Delivery Platform**, Prof Choonara and his team work on sophisticated new ways of delivering medicines and treatments for conditions including cancer and infectious diseases. 🧬💊
According to Wits, he has 51 pharmaceutical patents, 38 of them granted internationally, giving him what the university describes as Africa's largest pharmaceutical patent portfolio. 🌍👏
But perhaps the most encouraging part of his story is what this recognition represents.
South African scientists are not simply following developments happening elsewhere in the world. In laboratories right here at home, they are helping create them. 🇿🇦🔬✨
Prof Choonara's A-rating places him among a very small group of South African researchers recognised at this level internationally.
A pharmacist. A scientist. An innovator.
And now, a South African first. 💙🇿🇦
Congratulations, Professor Yahya Choonara. 👏🏆
