NUST To Increase Medical And Health Sciences School Intake
The National University of Science and Technology (NUST) has received approval from authorities to increase its enrolment for its medical and health sciences school from the current 25 to 60 per intake.
The Medical School, housed at Mpilo Central Hospital, was introduced in 2012 and has since produced four sets of graduates.
NUST School of Medicine Executive Dean, Professor Elopy Sibanda confirmed the development to the Sunday News on Tuesday. He said:
We have been allowed to increase our enrolment to 60. For the first couple of years, we were being monitored where our quality was being assured.
The authorities were satisfied that we produce quality graduates and now they can allow us to increase our number.
The increase in the number is still a small dot, we could have been able to increase more but we do not have premises at the moment as our campus is yet to be constructed.
The level of demand is very high and the candidates are very highly qualified and therefore I think if we could expand the services we would be able to offer more.
There is a World Health Organisation-recommended patient-to-doctor ratio which we can achieve if we are able to train more people.
We have Ekusileni Hospital which is meant to be a queenary hospital that is earmarked to do specialist services.
As such we need to train these specialists so that patients do not go out of the country.
