{"id":47256,"date":"2023-11-29T15:20:05","date_gmt":"2023-11-29T14:20:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cmtc.nl\/blog\/2023\/11\/29\/zuid-afrika-erika-leon-whitlock\/"},"modified":"2025-11-04T09:41:04","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T08:41:04","slug":"south-africa-erika-leon-whitlock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cmtc.nl\/en\/blog\/2023\/11\/29\/south-africa-erika-leon-whitlock\/","title":{"rendered":"South Africa &#8211; Erika &#038; Leon Whitlock"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We live in South Africa. Both of us work in the medical and pharmaceutical industry.<\/p>\n<p>We recently joined the organization (2023), when our daughter was born with what looked like severe port wine stains all over her body.<\/p>\n<p>Research into her condition of DCMO and local rare disease connections brought us to CMTC OVM NL and we would like to be of help and support to others as we share a mutual path.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"mailto:pa-southafrica@cmtc.nl\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Contact me<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/CmtcovmSouthAfrica\/\">Facebook page South Africa<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We live in South Africa. Both of us work in the medical and pharmaceutical industry. We recently joined the organization (2023), when our daughter was born with what looked like severe port wine stains all over her body. Research into her condition of DCMO and local rare disease connections brought us to CMTC OVM NL [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47252,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[329],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-patient-advocates-eng"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>South Africa - Erika &amp; Leon Whitlock - CMTC-OVM<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cmtc.nl\/en\/blog\/2023\/11\/29\/south-africa-erika-leon-whitlock\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"South Africa - Erika &amp; Leon Whitlock - CMTC-OVM\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"We live in South Africa. Both of us work in the medical and pharmaceutical industry. We recently joined the organization (2023), when our daughter was born with what looked like severe port wine stains all over her body. Research into her condition of DCMO and local rare disease connections brought us to CMTC OVM NL [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.cmtc.nl\/en\/blog\/2023\/11\/29\/south-africa-erika-leon-whitlock\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"CMTC-OVM\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2023-11-29T14:20:05+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-11-04T08:41:04+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.cmtc.nl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/leon-erika-whitlock-web.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"610\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"610\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Lex van der Heijden\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Lex van der Heijden\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.cmtc.nl\/en\/blog\/2023\/11\/29\/south-africa-erika-leon-whitlock\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.cmtc.nl\/en\/blog\/2023\/11\/29\/south-africa-erika-leon-whitlock\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Lex van der Heijden\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.cmtc.nl\/en\/#\/schema\/person\/fae194c6ccc4c847d931396c118a0b7f\"},\"headline\":\"South Africa &#8211; 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