A Durban schoolgirl has made her mark on the medical world by becoming the youngest ever contributor to the internationally respected South African Medical Journal.
Thirteen-year-old Safura Abdool Karim’s contribution was a study of ”Playstation thumb” among a sample of 120 of her former schoolmates at Crawford Preparatory in the city, which she did originally as a project for the school’s science day.
The study was published in the ”scientific letters” section of the journal’s June edition, alongside a piece on guidelines for malaria antigen testing.
Playstation thumb, she explained in the piece, was a repetitive strain injury (RSI) resulting from continuous playing ”for many hours” and could manifest as pain in the thumbs and blisters on the tips of the thumbs.
”Other associated symptoms include pain, stiffness, swelling, numbness and tingling of the hands, wrists, elbows, shoulders, back or neck,” she said.
Her survey showed that 28 of the 60 boys and 17 of the 60 girls played regularly, and that eight of these boys and seven of the girls had symptoms, complaining mainly of redness, tingling and blisters.
”Although RSI is not new, in the past it occurred mainly among adults,” she said. ”Today computers and computer games are creating new medical problems, such as Playstation thumb, which are becoming common in children.”
SAMJ deputy editor Professor JP van Niekerk said that to his knowledge, Safura was the youngest contributor ever to the journal.
The journal had in the past published pieces by students studying medicine at university level. ”But this is the first time we’ve had somebody so young,” he said.
”And I think it’s a jolly good article. It was accepted on merit, but we also thought it was great fun.”
Van Niekerk said that as a scientific contribution, Safura’s study would be listed on the Index Medicus, an international registry of medico-scientific articles, ”so the world can see this and cite it”.
Safura, who has now started high school, said she had not seen the journal yet, ”but I was really happy to hear it had been accepted”.
She said she herself did not own a Playstation, and had used one only three times in her life.
”Each time I have thought how can people play on this for hours because to me its capacity of entertainment is rather limited.
”My personal feeling is that Playstations encourage violence. Several times I have seen grade ones pretending to kill each other. It is also a waste of time.
”I admit that I have spent my share of time on the internet, but the games I play do not encourage violence. They are in some way educational. If Playstation [use] is hurting our youth I think it should be banned.”
Safura comes from a medical family. Her parents, Quarraisha and Salim, are highly respected Aids researchers, and Salim is the pro-vice chancellor of research at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
She herself plans to follow in their footsteps by becoming a volunteer paediatric clinical epidemiologist.
”That means I want to work as a volunteer doctor studying epidemics in children. I feel that if I am a doctor I can help people. Too many people die because there are not enough doctors around,” she said. -Sapa