About

Prof. Chifumbe Chintu was born on Dec 8, 1935, in Isoka, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). He died in Lusaka, Zambia on May 4, 2017. He studied medicine in Canada as Northern Rhodesia had no medical schools. After graduating from medical school, Chintu spent a few years working in hospitals in Toronto. He returned to Zambia in the mid-1970s; the fledgling nation's sole certified paediatrician. And, unlike most of his contemporaries, he stayed throughout the economic crisis of the next decade and beyond. Over the years, he twice served as Dean of School of Medicine (University of Zambia), Chairperson of the Health Professions Council of Zambia, Chairperson of Zambia Medical Association and in several other government and civil society roles. He believed that physicians had three duties: to treat, to teach, and to research. Prof. Chintu was the first Zambian doctor to attain the rank of professor at the university of Zambia.

Prof. Chintu persuaded Japan to build paediatric and neonatal wards at the University Teaching Hospital in Lusaka, Zambia, while he served as dean of medicine. He established a research ethics committee and introduced postgraduate training at the school of medicine. His research efforts changed global practice and WHO management guidelines for tuberculosis, tuberculosis–HIV coinfection, and respiratory infections.