Professor Chiratidzo Ellen Ndhlovu is the Deputy Chairperson of the Research Council of Zimbabwe. She is an Associate Professor of Medicine with the University of Zimbabwe and a practicing doctor. The Professor sits on a number of medical boards and is member of the Fellowship of the Royal College of Medicine in London. She was instrumental in the establishment of the East Central and Southern Africa College of Physicians (ECSACoP).
Professor Ndhlovu is currently an Associate Professor of Internal Medicine at the University of Zimbabwe's Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences in the Department of Medicine. She has been in this position since 2015 and continues to lecture in Internal Medicine with particular interest in sub-specialties of Nephrology and HIV Medicine for both undergraduate and postgraduate level. Given her interest in Essential Medicines, she is a tutor in Rational Use of Medicine. She has been involved in Rational Use of Medicine training locally, regionally and internationally and supervises dissertations at Master’s level for both Clinical Epidemiology and Internal Medicine. She has also supervised postgraduate students at M Phil/PhD levels. Professor Ndhlovu has been in charge of a medical ward since 1992 at the Parirenyatwa Hospital and also provides clinical service/ consultancies in her sub-specialty of Nephrology. She was the Deputy Dean of the University of Zimbabwe's College of Health Sciences from 1 April 2013 to 30 March 2018. She has chaired various Committees within the university and has been the Chairperson of the Department of Medicine from 2006 to 2010. Ndhlovu was President of the National Physicians Association of Zimbabwe (NAPAZ) from 2011 to 2013 and also served as the NAPAZ treasurer prior to that period. Being chair of the National Medicines and Therapeutics Policy Advisory Committee (NMTPAC) since 2000 the Professor is actively involved in the NMTPAC activities of advising the Secretary of Health & Child Welfare on all issues pertaining to pharmaceutical use including coordinating the review of the Zimbabwe Essential Medicines List (EDLIZ) as well as monitoring rational use of medicines in the country. She is part of the committee that also coordinates the revision of the Zimbabwe Antiretroviral Guidelines together with the AIDS and TB Unit. Through the activities of the NMTPAC she has been involved in essential medicines surveys in both the public sector and the private sector. She has also undertaken consultancies as an Essential Medicines Use Specialist locally and internationally (East Africa and Sudan). Professor Ndhlovu has been a member of the COVID-19 Case Management pillar since March 2020 which is responsible for the development of the national COVID -19 case management guidelines.
Professor Chiratidzo Ellen Ndhlovu qualified as a medical doctor (MBBCh) at the Welsh National School of Medicine, Cardiff in 1984. She joined the UZ in 1992 and later became a Clinical Epidemiologist via the University of Newcastle (Australia) in 2001. Professor Ndhlovu has been a member of the Fellowship of the Royal College of Medicine (London) since 2003. She is also a founding member of the East Central and Southern Africa College of Physicians (ECSACoP) which was founded in 2016. She became a certified medical educator via the Southern African FAIMER Regional Institute (SAFRI) in 2012.
Having vast interest and being widely active in clinical activities the Professor's research interest are in operational research in HIV related areas including Cryptococcal Meningitis and the handling of HIV by adolescents. Her Nephrology research activity has been mainly in supervising students to determine the burden of disease in Clinical Nephrology. She is involved, at Principal Investigator level, in multi-centre collaborative research mainly funded under CDC Cooperative Agreements. Through research funding, the Department of Medicine now has a fully functioning Infectious Disease Research Laboratory (IDRL) which receives support from the CDC Cooperative Agreements' collaborative activities with the Ragon Institute in Boston. Through her membership of the Joint Research and Ethics Committee (JREC), the Professor has been heavily involved in reviewing research protocols and clinical trial applications. This skill has also been enhanced by her membership of the Pharmacovigilance Clinical Trials Unit at the Medicine Control Authority of Zimbabwe (MCAZ) since 1996. Professor Ndhlovu is the sub-editor of the Central African Journal of Medicine and regularly reviews human research related manuscripts prior to publication. As a member of the Annual Medical Research Day (AMRD) “Small Group” at the University of Zimbabwe's Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences she also reviews abstracts for the AMRD.