Nthari Matsau obtained a BSc degree from the National University of Lesotho in 1977 and a Masters degree in Community Health from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, UK, in 1980. In 1983 she obtained a post-graduate Diploma in Management from the University of Connecticut in Hartford, USA, and in 1989 a Diploma in Financial Management with the Management Advisors London in association with the University of London.
She has also undergone numerous training courses in various fields related to her work and other areas of professional interest.
From 1977 to 1992 she worked for the Department of Health in Lesotho in the Health Planning and Statistics Division, which she headed for the last five of her fifteen years there. The main areas of responsibility in this unit were health planning and project management, public health and epidemidogy, research, and health statistics and data management.
She worked extensively with donor funding from major international donors and multilateral funding agencies, notable among which was her role as Project Leader for the two largest projects in the department, funded by the World Bank/IBRD and the ADB.
During this period she undertook several international consultancies in the fields of health management, systems evaluation, health planning, population management, and health resources utilization.
She has been involved in a number of project identification and fact-finding initiatives in health by agencies such as WHO, UNICEF, World Bank, ADB, UNDP, and EEC (now EU).
In 1992 she came back to South Africa, and from 1993 to 1995 worked as Executive Director for the Association of Black Accountants of Southern Africa, an organization dedicated to opening up access for black students and black accountants to training and job opportunities, as well as providing support and mentoring in the business and corporate environment.
In June 1995 she joined the Department of Health as Chief Director for Operational and Technical Policy, principally responsible for development of policy norms and standards for different areas in the provision of health care. With the revision of the structure of the department in 1997 she took up a slightly broader area of responsibility to include health information systems, health monitoring and surveillance, and research; the name of the Chief Directorate thus accordingly changed to Health Information, Evaluation and Research.
In June 2000 she was appointed Deputy Director-General for the branch Strategic Health Programmes. The focus of this branch is delivery of priority health programmes that answer to the defined strategic direction of the health care delivery system: quality in health care, a district-based health system, control of communicable diseases, access to medicines, disease surveillance and information systems, monitoring of the health system, research, reproductive health, mental health, and international relations in health.
The branch consists of six clusters made up of fifteen directorates:
There are also three director-headed Units, which report directly to the DDG.
Some of the notable milestones that have been reached by this branch, and which form part of the strategic core interventions in the delivery of health care, include the development of comprehensive packages of care for different levels of health facilities, advances in the regularization and management of health research in the country, such as the establishment of the national Essential National Health Research Committee, development of Ethical Guidelines in Conduct of Research on Human Subjects, and the introduction of Telemedicine, which allows patients in remote areas to access specialist care in urban centres without having to travel there.
Ms Matsau serves on the Board of the Medical Research Council, and internationally, she sits on the Board of International e-Health Association. She is a member of the American Public Health Association, and the International Society for Quality Assurance.