Resumo

MABUNDA, S A  e  XABA-MOKOENA, M N. Origins of South Africa's eight and oldest rural medical school: Pioneering a new approach to medical education. SAMJ, S. Afr. med. j. [online]. 2025, vol.115, n.11b, pp.71-72. ISSN 2078-5135.  https://doi.org/10.7196/SAMJ.2025.v115i11b.3584.

With seven medical schools and only two (University of Natal and the Medical University of Southern Africa (MEDUNSA)) freely admitting black South Africans in the early 1980s, South Africa still had notable shortages of medical doctors, especially in rural areas such as the Transkei independent homeland. Of the few doctors in the Transkei, only 5% or less were in rural areas, the rest in bigger towns. At the time, further observations were that most rural doctors were not South African, and they often found it difficult to communicate with patients directly. Owing to the paucity of medical doctors in the rural Transkei and elsewhere in South Africa, the University of Transkei - which had already helped many rural graduates from other fields - desired to remedy the situation. This was further noted by the then President of the Transkei, Dr Kaiser Matanzima, who approached a female pulmonologist in 1984, Dr (later Professor) Marina Nolwandle Xaba-Mokoena, who was the medical superintendent of Mthatha General Hospital, that a medical school or faculty of medicine and health sciences was direly needed for the area. This faculty would be affiliated with the University of Transkei (UNITRA), renamed Walter Sisulu University in 2005. So, when the highest office in the homeland approached her, stating that this idea had been canvassed for many years previously without success (rumoured to have been conceived as early as 1963), she considered and agreed on condition that she would be granted all support needed. The government further gave an instruction for only individuals from the Transkei to be enrolled in the soon-to-be new medical school.

        · texto em Inglês     · Inglês ( pdf )