Ms Andile Dlungele is a Developmental Lecturer in the Discipline of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), a registered pharmacist with the South African Pharmacy Council, and a doctoral researcher at UKZN. She holds a Bachelor of Pharmacy and a Master of Science in Pharmaceutical Chemistry from UKZN, formerly the University of Durban-Westville.
Her academic and professional experience spans hospital and community pharmacy, pharmaceutical manufacturing, clinical research, and public-sector pharmaceutical services. Since 2013, she has held leadership roles within pharmaceutical services in the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Health, contributing to medicine management and the strengthening of healthcare delivery at district level. This combination of academic, clinical, pharmaceutical, and health-system experience has shaped her research towards addressing challenges in medicine use and translating evidence into improvements in healthcare policy and practice.
Her current doctoral research focuses on antimicrobial stewardship within South African public healthcare facilities, with particular emphasis on stewardship institutionalisation, antimicrobial utilisation, healthcare professional engagement, prescriber education, and the translation of routinely generated health-system evidence into policy and practice. Her work examines how governance, workforce capacity, education, surveillance, institutional support, and health-system resources interact to influence the implementation and sustainability of antimicrobial stewardship in resource-constrained settings. Through this work, she has contributed to research examining antimicrobial stewardship from healthcare professional, pharmaceutical utilisation, institutional, intervention, and policy perspectives.
Her broader research interests centre on antimicrobial resistance and stewardship, rational medicine use, pharmaceutical public health, health policy and implementation, health systems strengthening, pharmacoepidemiology and medicine utilisation research, and quantitative health outcomes research. She has a particular interest in translating research findings into practical interventions and policy approaches that strengthen medicine use, patient care, and sustainable healthcare delivery.
