The Cuban Deputy Minister of Public Health, Fernando Navarro Gonzalez, accompanied by the Director of Medical Teaching, Dr Jorge Gonzalez, held a meeting with Deputy Health Minister, Dr Sibongiseni Dhlomo, and the WSU Faculty of Health Sciences recently.
In 1996, the South African government entered into a bilateral agreement with the Cuban government to establish the Nelson Mandela-Fidel Castro Medical Collaboration programme (NMFCMC), in terms of which selected South African students are sent to Cuba to receive their initial medical training in a Cuban university.
“It was in 2016, a few years after we had sent students to Cuba in big numbers that our KwaZulu-Natal Premier, Willies Mchunu, sent us to Angola. I led a delegation to Angola because we heard that Angola was also part of this medical training in Cuba, and we wanted to learn from them,” said Dhlomo.
He further added that when they went to Angola after they established that the country was sending fewer students to Cuba and had started to bring Cuban lecturers to Angola to train them there.
Dhlomo and Gonzalez visited Angola when they were just starting the faculty, but they now have five faculties of health sciences whose exit degrees come from the Department of Public Health in Cuba.
Health Minister, Dr Joseph Phaahla, has assigned Dhlomo to go out to the country and identify universities that can buy into this programme of adopting the public health approach.
“Professor Mbokazi (WSU faculty of health sciences’ dean, Professor Jabu Mbokazi), you and your university were targeted because you carry the name of a big giant, Walter Sisulu, and some of us will be very proud to see WSU as one of those leading universities embracing this programme,” said Dhlomo.
He further stated that one of the things that set WSU apart already for this programme is that the university already has Cuban lecturers who support the faculty.
Gonzalez, said, “The first thing I want to convey is that the NMFC programme is multifaceted and today we are going to focus on the academic facet and how we can perfect the programme of the students trained in Cuba.”
He further added that South Africa is going to look at how best to perfect the programme and the Cuban government will support whatever decision that South Africa takes.
“In relation to the proposed configuration of the development of community-based medicine, based on the experience we have with other countries such as Angola, I believe that we can strengthen this collaboration.”
Mbokazi, said, “Cooperation between WSU and Cuba is as old as the new democratic South Africa. Continued partnership will assist in enabling us to reach our goals.”
He concluded that the programmes in the faculty currently include medicine, clinical associates, health promotion, nursing, orthotics and prosthetics, and medical science; the method used to teach them is problem-based learning, community-based education and services, and decentralised teaching platforms, with all these teaching methods using small group teaching.
