Dr. WAJ Meintjes
(Director)MBChB; PGDip (Occ Med); FCPHM(SA) Occ Med; MMed (Occ Med)
Dr. Jack Meintjes completed his undergraduate medical degree at the University of Pretoria, after which he completed his houseman and community service years at the 2 Military Hospital complex. This involved rotations through all major medical disciplines, including medical support to the SA Navy divers in Simonstown. He served as the Chief Diving and Submarine Medical Officer of the SA Navy for a number of years. After a 12-year career in the military, he provided occupational medicine and diving medical support to a number of commercial diving companies and mines, and was contracted by Stellenbosch University to develop BScHons degrees in Diving Medicine and Hyperbaric Medicine, as well as the MSc (Baromedicine) degree. He has been working at the university and Tygerberg Academic Hospital since 2004 and has completed the Postgraduate Diploma in Occupational Medicine, as well as the 4-year MMed (Occupational Medicine) specialist degree. He is registered with the Health Professions Council of South Africa, and holds a fellowship with the Colleges of Medicine of South Africa as a Specialist in Occupational Medicine; serving as a core examiner of Specialists in Occupational Medicine.
He is heading Occupational Medicine at Tygerberg Academic Hospital. As specialist he consults in diving, hyperbaric and occupational medicine aspects on an international basis, and serves on a number of national and international bodies, including the Diving Advisory Board of the South African Department of Labour, the Diving Medical Advisory Committee (see dmac-diving.org), the European Diving Technology Committee (see www.edtc.org), etc. He is also the Medical Director of Divers Alert Network Southern Africa and provides consultant call services for Divers Alert Network Europe. He consults on approximately 3-5 cases of serious decompression illness per week.