Johannesburg - In just two years, acclaimed local publicist Vanessa Perumal has gone from losing her voice to a rare cancer and full laryngectomy to finding it once more as a speaker.
The managing director of JT Communication Solutions has been invited to address the 70th annual meeting of the International Association of Laryngectomees in Charlotte, North Carolina, in the US.
She will attend the conference in her own right and as ambassador of Afya Rekod, an African-developed health-tech platform, and is set to deliver her address on Youth Day in a bid to commemorate the 46th anniversary of South Africa’s youth uprising.
For two and a half decades, Perumal has established herself as a social entrepreneur, social justice activist, innovator, feminist and strategist. She is also the founder and managing director of JT Communication Solutions, a pan-African media and communications agency.
But no matter what her role or job title, Perumal has always strived to drive social change in South Africa and on the continent by focusing on how narratives of change are structured.
Having successfully grown her business from a traditional PR, publicity and communications agency to embrace digital technologies and social media platforms, Perumal is determined to explore the power of digital technology and to transform the way in which African content is produced and distributed.
In addition, Perumal was recognised at the 2014 Mbokodo Awards in the promotion of arts in media category and was a finalist in the 2016 Businesswomen’s Association of SA Awards.
She also participated in the 2016 Graça Machel Trust’s Women Advancing Africa Roundtable, and was honoured at the 2017 2nd Biennial Backing Vocalists and Session Musicians (BVSM) Awards for her work in promoting music and arts in the media.
Perumal’s voice might have always been her tool, but in 2020, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, she faced the cruellest of ironies: a chondrosarcoma diagnosis, a rare laryngeal cancer.
Here vocal cord palsy had her ear, nose and throat surgeon Dr Khaleel Ismail searching for answers, while hospital delays due to the coronavirus stalled the immediate implementation of therapy.
By May of 2020, when the tumour presented itself, Perumal was faced with the heartbreaking decision to lose her voice box in order to save her life.
Ismail, based at the Wits Donald Gordon Medical Centre, at the time assembled a team of highly skilled medical experts to take on the case.
This included an oncologist, vocal oncologist, speech therapist and physiotherapist, and following a successful operation, Perumal spent 24 days in intensive and then high care.
She has also spent the last two years rediscovering her voice through intensive rehabilitation, speech therapy and physiotherapy, artificial speaking devices and her renowned iron will.
Her recovery fed her determination to change the African narrative and highlight the excellence and innovation of the medical professionals and health-care workers she encountered on her journey to recovery.
Despite the challenges of a “new” voice and slow recovery, including follow-up operations, Perumal has not slowed down and has returned to her passion, once again making herself heard in entrepreneurial and innovation spaces and continuing her communication work across the continent.
Perumal has developed powerful partnerships with various stakeholders to forge technology-driven solutions to Africa’s development challenges.
“Now that I have a seat at a global table in this, my second chance, I recognise how important it is as Africans that we innovate our spaces to be more inclusive,” Perumal said.
She is also thrilled about her upcoming International Association of Laryngectomees address.
“Collaborating with Afya Rekod founder John Kamara and his team of innovators is a conscious decision to demonstrate that Africans can advance solutions made for a global ecosystem.”
Afya Rekod is a digital health data platform that focuses on the patient and allows health facilities to capture, store, have real-time access to and mobility of the patient’s health data.
Using artificial intelligence (AI) and various blockchain modules, the platform allows health institutions, partners and patients to make insightful data-driven decisions that allow doctors to provide better health care for patients.