Kate Sherry

I am an occupational therapist and rural health activist from South Africa, with a focus on primary healthcare, community-based rehabilitation and mental health in the African context. In 2016 I completed a PhD in Public Health at the University of Cape Town, with a research study into the interactions between people with disabilities and the primary healthcare system in a remote rural village in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. During the writing up, I was privileged to spend three months as a visiting scholar at the ASC in Leiden.

At the start of 2017, I joined Growing the Nations Therapy Programs, a rehabilitation NGO in Madagascar engaged in developing the profession of Occupational Therapy (Ergotherapie) in this country, in partnership with the Malagasy Ministry of Health and Population, and other stakeholders. I am one of two Ergotherapie lecturers teaching on the recently established degree program at the University of Antananarivo, from which the first ever Malagasy ergotherapeute will graduate this year.