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Professor Vyvienne M'kumbuzi was born in Zimbabwe on 15 June 1973 and completed her degree in Physiotherapy at the University of Zimbabwe. She worked for a few years at district and provincial level where she developed a passion for public health and community physiotherapy. She then spent some time teaching Community Physiotherapy at the University of Zimbabwe before going to study further. She obtained her Masters in Community Physiotherapy and a Diploma in Public Health from the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. Professor M'kumbuzi spent five years in Rwanda as a senior lecturer at Kigali University and was instrumental in reviewing the physiotherapy curriculum in Rwanda before joining the University of Malawi as the Head of the Department of Physiotherapy. At the time of her death in August 2016, she had just completed data collection for her Ph.D. with which she was aiming to develop a tool for evaluation of Community Based Rehabilitation and had published two articles from this study.
1. M'kumbuzi VR, Myezwa H. Conceptualization of community-based rehabilitation in Southern Africa: a systematic review: original research. South African Journal of Physiotherapy 2016; 72(1): 1-8.
2. M'kumbuzi V, Myezwa H, Shumba T, Namanja A. 2015. Disability in southern Africa: Insights into its magnitude and nature. Knowledge for a Sustainable World: A Southern African-Nordic contribution, p.31.
A publication in Rural and Remote Health (M'kumbuzi VR, Myezwa H. Adaptation of the global frameworks for community based rehabilitation in southern Africa: a proof of concept. Rural and Remote Health 2017; 17: 3717) is her third.
Professor M'kumbuzi will be sorely missed as she was an accomplished academic with strong critical thinking skills and an admirable ability to write. She contributed to the area of Public Health and Community Physiotherapy and presented her work at many international conferences. Vyvienne will be missed by her mother, two sisters (Letty and Chishamiso), her brother (Walter), friends and colleagues. Vyv's appreciation and commitment to fostering education is attributable to her late father, Maximillian Bernard M'kumbuzi (who passed away on 1 May 2017).The academic world in general and the physiotherapy field in particular has lost a true soldier.