Dr Naidoo obtained her medical degree in 1992 from the University of Natal and undertook her medical internship at the R.K. Khan hospital. While gaining clinical experience in a family medical practice, she obtained a Postgraduate Diploma in Occupational Health from the University of Cape Town in 1996 and was then appointed as a Medical Officer in the National Centre for Occupational Health, (based at the University of Natal) in 1998. In 1999 she was granted a US Fogarty International Center Scholarship at the University of Iowa’s Center for International Rural and Environmental Health. On returning to South Africa in 2000 she joined the Public Health Registrar programme in the Department of Community Health Medicine at the University of Natal. She obtained a Diploma in Health Services Management in 2000. In 2001 Dr. Naidoo served as a consultant to the International Labour Organisation’s “International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour” (IPEC). She convened a Southern African regional meeting in Harare, Zimbabwe in 2002, at which international facilitators engaged with participants on developing a strategy for addressing the worst forms of child labour in Africa. In 2003 she obtained her Fellowship in Public Health Medicine from the Colleges of Medicine of South Africa. She took a Specialist post in the Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health, University of KwaZulu-Natal in 2003 working actively in Public and Occupational Health, a position she leaves after 11 years to take up her new appointment. In 2006 she obtained a Master of Medicine Degree in Community Health from the University of KwaZulu-Natal focusing on the “Incidence of Tuberculosis in Healthcare Workers employed in Public Sector Hospitals in eThekwini”. Publications from this dissertation helped raise awareness of a growing public and occupational health problem among healthcare workers in South Africa. In 2006 she became an Associate in the Division of Occupational Medicine in the College of Public Health Medicine. In 2011 she obtained her PHD from the Institute of Risk Assessment Science, Utrecht University, Netherlands. Her PHD titled “Women’s Occupational Health: Working in Small-Scale Agriculture in South Africa” focused on exposure epidemiology relating to occupational and environmental disease in marginalised women workers on the Makhatini Flats of Northern KwaZulu-Natal. The publications from this PHD appeared in leading international journals highlighting the impact of agricultural activities and pesticides on the health of working women. Dr Naidoo‘s research interests include a focus on women’s reproductive health and child development in disadvantaged rural environments. In 2011 she was invited to be part of an International Consortium of Agricultural Cohort studies (AGRICOH), which is examining the environmental and occupational exposures in agricultural settings associated with excess risk of chronic illnesses such as cancer, respiratory, neurologic and auto-immune disease, reproductive and allergic disorders. Owing to her work on pesticide exposure she is currently part of the working group developing Volume 113 of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) Monograph on ‘Some Organochlorine Insecticides and Some Chlorphenoxy Herbicides”. She is also involved in health systems strengthening research with a view to improving service delivery. She maintains an interest in the health of healthcare workers with particular emphasis on reducing workplace exposures with a focus on tuberculosis and disability management as a means of improving service provision.

Women’s health and Child development