Dr Mamaila Lebea is a Paediatric Cardiologist at Busamed Modderfontein and Nelson Mandela Children’s Hospital, where she works with children with congenital and acquired heart defects. She is a proud wife and mother of two amazing boys.
She obtained her MBChB at the University of Cape Town (2007) and completed her internship at Helen Joseph Hospital and Rahima Moosa Mother and Child hospital (2008 and 2009), in Gauteng Province. This was followed by community service at Polokwane and Mankweng hospital in Limpopo province (2010).
She has always wanted to be a heart specialist, inspired by a short story of the first heart transplant which she read while at Shotong Primary School. At University, she fell in love with internal medicine and hoped to become a physician and later cardiologist.
It was during community service in Limpopo, where she got inspired by the paediatrics team lead by the late Prof Nancy Shipalana to pursue a career in Paediatrics, and rather to become a paediatric cardiologist instead of “adult” cardiologist.
Following her community service in Polokwane, she was initially conflicted as to whether to take a post in Internal Medicine at Groote Schuur or a Paediatric Post at Red Cross children’s hospital. By that time, she had fallen so much in love with working with children and their families, that she chose Red cross children’s hospital instead. She worked for 6-months as a medical officer there. This was immediately followed by a paediatric registrar post in the University of Witwatersrand with rotations at Chris Hani Baragwanath (CHBAH) and Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg academic hospital. She completed her training in paediatrics in 2014, and immediately started her training in Paediatric Cardiology at CHBAH. She qualified as a paediatric cardiologist in 2018. In 2021, she completed an advanced cardiologist training with Sickkids hospital (Canada).
She is an aspiring academic and will like to “top” her academic achievements with a PhD one day. Some of her work has been presented at local and international conferences and published in medical journals.
Some of the community recognition she received include
• Top 200 young South African
• Destiny magazine Top 40 under 40
• Mail and Guardian Top 200
