Issued by: Truth and Reconciliation Commission
24 April 1997
STATEMENT BY THE TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION: WESTERN & NORTHERN CAPE OFFICES
The Family Practitioner's Association of Kwazulu/Natal has bestowed the KM Seedat award on TRC Commissioner, Dr Wendy Orr.
The award is bestowed annually to people who has made a contribution to medicine by upholding human rights. She will receive the award next month in Durban from the Association's chairperson Dr KM Govender.
Dr Orr is the deputy chairperson of the Commission's Reparations and Rehabilitation Committee and convener of the Western and Northern Cape Regions. She is well known for her successful supreme court application for an interdict to prevent the former South African Police from torturing detainees held under the State of Emergency in 1985. At the time she was a district surgeon in Port Elizabeth.
Dr Orr has since worked in, amongst others, the NGO sector, private practice and as Deputy Registrar of student affairs at the University of Cape Town.
She has been involved in Powa, the Namda Detainees Service and Rape Crisis. Her interests include AIDS policy development and education, women's health issues and human rights in medicine. Last year she was appointed as member of the South African Medical Association's Ethics and Legal Affairs Committee. Dr Orr is also a consultant to the British Medical Association on a report they are compiling on the role of dcotors in preventing human rights abuses.
For more information, please call Christelle Terreblanche - 0824588461