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Mashudu Tshifularo: The First Middle-ear Transplant

For nearly 430 million globally, hearing loss is a disability. It is expected that by 2050, this number could rise to more than 700 million, according to the World Health Organization.

Published

2 years ago

February 15, 2023

Oakland Post

A team of surgeons led by Dr. Mashudu Tshifularo, using 3D technology, successfully pioneered the transplant of a patient’s middle ear to cure his deafness.

Mashudu Tshifularo: The First Middle-ear Transplant

For nearly 430 million globally, hearing loss is a disability. It is expected that by 2050, this number could rise to more than 700 million, according to the World Health Organization.

Prior to 2019, there was no known cure, treatment, or surgical procedure for deafness worldwide. On March 13 of that year, a team of surgeons led by Dr. Mashudu Tshifularo (1964–) using 3D technology, successfully pioneered the transplant of a patient’s middle ear to cure his deafness. The team was from the University of Pretoria Faculty of Health at the Steve Biko Academic hospital in Pretoria, South Africa.

The patient, a 35-year-old man, suffered hearing loss after a car accident caused his inner ear what was thought to have been permanent damage. Tshifularo recreated the bones that make up the inner ear, replacing the damaged ones. The one-and-a-half-hour surgery, performed through endoscopy, was the first-ever transplant of the middle ear that allowed a deaf man to hear.

During Tshifularo’s first doctorate studies, he focused on conductive hearing loss and through this, came up with the idea of using 3D technology to recreate any of the inner ear bones that may be damaged, restoring a patient’s hearing. While studying at the University of Pretoria, he forayed into the use of 3D printing technology.

Today, 3D technology has proved to be extremely useful and needed in the medical industry.

“By replacing only the ossicles (three bones in either middle ear) that aren’t functioning properly, the procedure carries significantly less risk than known prostheses and their associated surgical procedures,” Tshifularo told Radio Nigeria during a post-surgery interview. “The technique could be the cure for hearing defects irrespective of the patient’s age.”

Tshifularo added that the patient’s hearing will be restored immediately, “but since they will be wrapped in bandages, only after two weeks, when they are removed, will they be able to tell the difference.”

Tshifularo grew up as a herdsman in the rural village of Mbahela outside Thohoyandou, in Venda, South Africa. By age 13, he knew he would be a medical doctor. After attending the Mbilwi Secondary School, he began training in medicine at the University of Natal. In 1990, he began working as a practicing physician at Tshilidzini Hospital and in 1995 became a professor and began heading the Department of Otorhinolaryngology (ear, nose and throat) at the University of Pretoria.

In 2000, he was appointed as the youngest and only Black professor of ENT in South Africa. Tshifularo is also the senior pastor and founder of the Christ Revealed Fellowship Church near Pretoria. He has also authored several books in this ministry.

“People like me never arrive,” Tshifularo said. “After climbing one mountain we want to climb another one. If I was easily satisfied, I would have never achieved all the breakthroughs in my life.”

Learn how three young men took their place among the 5% of Black U.S. doctors in “Pulse of Perseverance,” by Pierre Johnson, Maxime Madhere, and Joseph Semien.

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Fighting to Keep Blackness

BlackPressUSA NEWSWIRE — Trump supporters have introduced another bill to take down the bright yellow letters of Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, D.C., in exchange for the name Liberty Plaza. D.C.

Published

1 day ago

March 7, 2025

Oakland Post

By April Ryan

As this nation observes the 60th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama, the words of President Trump reverberate. “This country will be WOKE no longer”, an emboldened Trump offered during his speech to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night. Since then, Alabama Congresswoman Terri Sewell posted on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter this morning that “Elon Musk and his DOGE bros have ordered GSA to sell off the site of the historic Freedom Riders Museum in Montgomery.” Her post of little words went on to say, “This is outrageous and we will not let it stand! I am demanding an immediate reversal. Our civil rights history is not for sale!” DOGE trying to sell Freedom Rider Museum

Also, in the news today, the Associated Press is reporting they have a file of names and descriptions of more than 26,000 military images flagged for removal because of connections to women, minorities, culture, or DEI. In more attempts to downplay Blackness, a word that is interchanged with woke, Trump supporters have introduced another bill to take down the bright yellow letters of Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, D.C., in exchange for the name Liberty Plaza. D.C. Mayor Morial Bowser is allowing the name change to keep millions of federal dollars flowing there. Black Lives Matter Plaza was named in 2020 after a tense exchange between President Trump and George Floyd protesters in front of the White House. There are more reports about cuts to equity initiatives that impact HBCU students. Programs that recruited top HBCU students into the military and the pipeline for Department of Defense contracts have been canceled.

Meanwhile, Democrats are pushing back against this second-term Trump administration’s anti-DEI and Anti-woke message. In the wake of the 60th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Selma, several Congressional Black Caucus leaders are reintroducing the Voting Rights Act. South Carolina Democratic Congressman James Clyburn and Alabama Congresswoman Terry Sewell are sponsoring H.R. 14, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Six decades ago, Lewis was hit with a billy club by police as he marched for the right to vote for African Americans. The right for Black people to vote became law with the 1965 Voting Rights Act that has since been gutted, leaving the nation to vote without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act. Reflecting on the late Congressman Lewis, March 1, 2020, a few months before his death, Lewis said, “We need more than ever in these times many more someones to make good trouble- to make their own dent in the wall of injustice.”

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Oakland Post: Week of March 5 – 11, 2025

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of March 5 – 11, 2025

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March 7, 2025

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Rep. Al Green is Censured by The U.S. House After Protesting Trump on Medicaid

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — His censure featured no hearing at the House Ethics Committee and his punishment was put on the floor for a vote by the Republican controlled House less than 72 hours after the infraction in question.

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2 days ago

March 6, 2025

Oakland Post

By Lauren Burke

In one of the quickest punishments of a member of the U.S. House of Representatives in the modern era, Congressman Al Green (D-TX) was censured by a 224-198 vote today in the House. His censure featured no hearing at the House Ethics Committee and his punishment was put on the floor for a vote by the Republican controlled House less than 72 hours after the infraction in question. Of the last three censures of members of the U.S. House, two have been members of the Congressional Black Caucus under GOP control. In 2023, Rep. Jamal Bowman was censured.

On the night of March 4, as President Trump delivered a Joint Address to Congress, Rep. Green interrupted him twice. Rep. Green shouted, “You don’t have a mandate to cut Medicare, and you need to raise the cap on social security,” to President Trump. In another rare event, Rep. Green was escorted off the House floor by security shortly after yelling at the President by order of GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson. Over the last four years, members of Congress have yelled at President Biden during the State of the Union. Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor-Greene was joined by Republican Rep. Lauren Bobert (R-CO) in 2022 in yelling at President Biden. In 2023, Rep. Greene, Rep. Bob Good (R-VA), and Rep. Lisa McClain (R-MI) yelled at Biden, interrupting his speech. In 2024, wearing a red MAGA hat, a violation of the rules of the U.S. House, Greene interrupted Biden again. She was never censured for her behavior. Rep. Green voted “present” on his censure and was joined by freshman Democrat Congressman Shomari Figures of Alabama who also voted “present”.

All other members of the Congressional Black Caucus voted against censuring Green. Republicans hold a four-seat advantage in the U.S. House after the death of Texas Democrat and former Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner yesterday. Ten Democrats voted along with Republicans to censure Rep. Green, including Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, who is in the leadership as the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. “I respect them but, I would do it again,” and “it is a matter of conscience,” Rep. Green told Black Press USA’s April Ryan in an exclusive interview on March 5. After the vote, a group of Democrats sang “We Shall Overcome” in the well at the front of the House chamber. Several Republican members attempted to shout down the singing. House Speaker Mike Johnson gaveled the House out of session and into a recess. During the brief recess members moved back to their seats and out of the well of the House. Shortly after the vote to censor Rep. Green, Republican Congressman Andy Ogles of Tennessee quickly filed legislation to punish members who participated in the singing of “We Shall Overcome.” Earlier this year, Rep. Ogles filed legislation to allow President Donald Trump to serve a third term, which is currently unconstitutional. As the debate started, the stock market dove down over one-point hours from close. The jobs report will be made public tomorrow.