Ukwanda Rural Clinical School
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Ukwanda Rural Clinical School
The health of people in rural communities is frequently worse than those in urban areas. The reasons are many and varied, but poverty is a major factor. Often the facilities, services and personnel for effective health service delivery are lacking.
It is against this backdrop that the Ukwanda Centre for Rural Health was launched in the Boland and Overberg region of the Western Cape by Stellenbosch University (SU) in 2001. Now an ambitious expansion programme that will lead to the establishment of a fully-fledged rural clinical school has been developed by the university’s Faculty of Health Sciences, in partnership with the Provincial Government of the Western Cape.
The idea is to extend health sciences education from the Faculty’s predominately hospital-centric setting in Tygerberg, Cape Town, out into underserved and rural areas.
The Ukwanda Rural Clinical School will enable the University to produce more healthcare professionals by focusing on underserved rural sites. International experience indicates that recruitment and retention rates are higher if you immerse students in rural life during training and recruit students from rural areas.
Some students will be placed in the hub of the School for up to a year, where they will do three-month rotations in different aspects of healthcare at Worcester Regional Hospital. Others will go to district hospitals situated in the spokes, where they will receive training under the guidance of a specialist family physician with support from other specialists.
The foundation for this project has been laid by the Ukwanda Centre for Rural Health. Ukwanda is a Xhosa word that means to “develop” and “grow” in the community. The Centre operates in a number of towns and other rural settings across two provinces. The Worcester Regional Hospital in the Western Cape and the Madwaleni Hospital in the Eastern Cape are key sites.
Through their experiential training, SU students assist local health practitioners to provide health services in community health centres, general practices, mobile clinics, schools, old age homes and private residences – all under the supervision of trained healthcare professionals.