Surgical Research in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Role for Telehealth? 26th D. J. Du Plessis Lecture, Delivered at the 35th Annual Conference of the Surgical Research Society of Southern Africa, Bloemfontein, June 2007 (D.J. Du Plessis Lecture) (Conference News‪)‬

As a non-surgeon I feel especially honoured to have been afforded the privilege of presenting this, the 26th annual D. J. du Plessis Lecture of the Surgical Research Society of Southern Africa. I thank Professor Thompson and his organising committee for the invitation. We are here to remember and honour the late Professor D. J. du Plessis. He was a man of many parts: a soldier, a surgeon, a researcher, and an academic leader. Born in Paarl in 1916, he entered medical school at the University of Cape Town in 1935. At the outbreak of World War II he enlisted and joined the South African Medical Corps, graduating in 1941. After the war he commenced surgical training at the University of the Witwatersrand, moving back to Cape Town in 1949. In 1951 he went to Oxford on a Nuffield Fellowship, where he gained Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, and was awarded the Master of Surgery from the University of the Witwatersrand for his work on salivary gland tumours. He then returned to Groote Schuur Hospital as a specialist surgeon.