Professor Karen Sliwa-Hahnle shares frontline insights from decades in public service on Africa's silent killer - hypertension - and why a simple blood pressure check could save your life. Also, her plan for olive oil and plastic, if she were president.

This World Heart Day, Daily Maverick sat down with cardiologist Professor Karen Sliwa-Hahnle who has 872 publications (550 of those peer-reviewed) in the cardiovascular field - the most prolific on the subject on the continent. She is a professor of cardiology at the Department of Medicine at Groote Schuur Hospital, and the Director of the Cape Heart Institute at the University of Cape Town.

Her areas of expertise are heart failure, structural heart diseases such as cardiomyopathy and cardiac disease in pregnancy.

She's won numerous awards, which she did not want mentioned. More significant to her is the supervision of 38 master's and PhD students. She's done meaningful research - on a low budget - which is no small feat, she added.

But most important to her are the patients in the public sector. Virtually all of them return for treatment. Encouraging them, helping them apply for social grants, and talking about their lives mean the most to her. Plus, they are all rather nice. Somehow they are not miserable, despite having a chronic illness, she says.

Sliwa-Hahnle developed a medical therapy for heart disease in pregnancy. It saves lives. It is the reason she got the Order...