Some people are fortunate enough to realise their life purpose at a very young age. Dr Brett Lyndall Singh knew he wanted to be a healer when he was in primary school. His failure to resuscitate his ill grandmother during adolescence cemented his drive to acquire the necessary skills to save lives and, despite not finding a place at any medical school in South Africa, this is exactly what he did. Dr Singh spent 10 years in China gaining extensive medical experience and discovering his flair and passion for entrepreneurship. He spoke to BizNews at length about the unique opportunities to learn in China and how, along with his new love of entrepreneurship, led to the birth of his company, Alpha and Omega Medtech. It’s no wonder that Dr Singh was recently selected as one of Forbes Africa’s 30 under 30 innovators. – Nadya Swart
Dr Brett Lyndall Singh on his background
I’m from uMgungundlovu in KwaZulu-Natal. I was born in Pietermaritzburg and grew up in Howick in the Midlands. I finished off high school at St Charles College in 2010 and from a young age I always wanted to be a medical doctor. When I was in high school, I had the pleasure of staying with my grandmother and. Actually while she was quite ill, she had a heart attack basically right next to me and I didn’t know how to perform CPR and I basically failed to resuscitate her. And that failure cemented the idea of making sure that I go and equip myself with the right skills to help save lives. So anyway, in 2010, when I graduated from high school, I applied across the country to get a space in medical school. But I didn’t get a space. I got a good offer to study overseas in China, though and there was a scholarship available, so it was quite cost effective.
I came back to South Africa in 2017, expecting to get an opportunity to join the workforce in public health. And once again, South Africa had other plans. You know, I wasn’t given the opportunity because of the Health Professions Council of South Africa. They had a moratorium on international medical graduates. And so they had basically told me that I’d have to wait 2 to 3 years just to write the board exam to even get into the system. And this is when I’ve already got all of my qualifications. I’ve completed my pre-graduate internship, I’ve got all of my qualifications certified by the international body, which is the ECFMG, that’s the international medical graduates body in the United States to basically show that the university that I went to was legitimate, the curriculum that I did was legitimate, and it’s all up to a world standard. South Africa had other things in mind, you know: bearing in mind we still have a huge problem with the ratio of patients to doctors in the country.
On the marriage between entrepreneurship and medicine in his company Alpha and Omega Medtech
Alpha and Omega Medtech is the company that we were able to launch as our team’s response to COVID-19. And so basically the most recognised work that we’ve done was to develop the world’s first China, South Africa, COVID 19 rapid antigen test kit. And that test kit was later approved by the European authorities and had a CE mark. We’re able to get our first order of our test kits in the European market and from 2020 onwards I had already started to engineer my way back to South Africa to try and take the team that I worked with in China and all of the people that I’ve grown with back home.
The main product we started was a diagnostics product that was basically designed so that in areas that have minimal resources where no PCR tests can be done because there’s no electricity or there’s no expensive PCR machine and reagents to run the PCR machine. A rapid test would be the next best device for them to use. And so I basically was forced into the world of medical devices and health care management. So I took all of the experience that I gained as a medical doctor while working for five years in in a Chinese hospital, you know, nine years altogether in medical school, and now also being thrust into China’s response to COVID 19; learning the whole Chinese strategy of how they implement different models in different cities and basically get everybody on board with whatever plan that they are trying to execute nationally, provincially or citywide. And so I learned techniques to develop a strong strategy to go forward. Basically, we were recognised as one of the largest individual private companies to respond to South Africa’s COVID 19 disaster, where we basically facilitated a donation of R25 million worth of COVID tests to the South African Medical Research Council in 2021, which was used for the Sisonke vaccine trial and some other studies that will be published in the coming months and years.
On the primary issues that the South African healthcare system presently faces
I really believe that we need to do something with the problem of our human capital being under-utilised, as well as our existing infrastructure. So in SAMRC’s landscape analysis for medical device manufacturers, they found that approximately 40% of our ISO approved facilities to manufacture certain medical devices are actually running under capacity. So we could actually be pumping out many more things and we ourselves first need to service our own market. But we also have the opportunity across the AFCFTA agreement to also supply the rest of the continent with these medical devices, if we’re able to create these models. So I think the main problem we have is that we don’t use our human capital properly. We train certain people, they go to university, they get subsidised to go and study, and they don’t have anywhere to go afterwards. So there’s no long-term plan of how to incentivise the growth of SMEs in the industry.
The whole medical device and pharmaceutical industry, especially in South Africa, is tightly run by a very few companies. And if you’re not part of that inner circle and you’re a small innovation based startup, you’re going to die. You’re definitely going to die after either because of your burn rate or because you don’t have any customers or because you don’t have a distribution network.
On his hopes and biggest takeaways
As a founder who has had a medical background, I have the skill to interact with people to understand their story and to make sure that I am able to solve the problem. I have to know what problem-solving is. So, we’re solving the problem of having a lack of resources. Our public sector cannot pay their staff. They cannot purchase resources for our hospitals. But there are funds available. So there is definitely a mismatch of resources. There’s not a cohesive system where we can see incentives being given to growth, to SMEs, to opportunities for unemployed graduates to be placed in areas. And I think it’s all about just being given an opportunity, not for all of the rejection that I’ve had. You know, they’ve been rejected to go to medical school, rejected to get into the workforce. I’m sure most entrepreneurs you will interview have a similar background because they weren’t given a chance. They created a chance not only for themselves, but for others. And so I think that’s where the value lies, you know, making sure that we bring the diaspora back.
I’m just an example of someone who educated themselves outside of South Africa, but saw the potential that we have over the next couple of years. And I’m doing my best to also attract the other guys to come back and say, hey, hey, guys, come back. There’s actually a lot of opportunity here. We can actually do something. And yeah, we do need their support. So I think it’s not so much about me. I just need to make sure that if the vision is making South Africa’s main goals like youth unemployment, to be at least solving that problem in our sector, then I’m very happy. For example, the Department of Small Business told us that we need to create 9 million jobs by 2030 SMEs in South Africa. And so for my sector in healthcare we have to create 1 million jobs. So that’s our goal. Basically, if we can create platforms or help systems to create 1 million jobs in our life sciences sector, then I would say we have done a good job. I think we just have to keep on going. And I believe we’ll get there.
Read also:
- Big Pharma is far too cosy with medical schools, researchers, professors – Dr Rapiti
- A feasible alternative to NHI and SA’s current healthcare system
- As sweet as sugar – but not in the long run: Dr Robert Lustig
