Wits launches ‘€˜Centre for Rural Health’€™

The centre’€™s inaugural Director, Prof Ian Couper, said the centre’€™s main focus is to ‘€œrecruit human resources for rural health’€.

‘€œWe can do everything in terms of providing facilities, we can make sure the drug supplies are there, but unless we have the health workers, all of that will mean nothing’€, he said.  

As for how that will be achieved, Professor Couper said:

‘€œThe centre is trying to focus on multiple strategies: selecting students in rural areas and supporting them to study health sciences, developing post graduate programs, researching issues around ‘€˜how can we improve resources for rural health’€™, and advocacy to bring these issues to the attention of policy makers, politicians and other stake-holders’€, he said.  

Vice-Chancellor and Principal of Wits University, Prof. Loyiso Nongxa, who himself hails from the mostly rural Eastern Cape Province, congratulated Prof Couper’€™s team. He related a personal and deeply passionate story that mirrors the lack of proper and sufficient health services in rural South Africa.

‘€œI’€™ll tell you a personal story and I hope I can finish it without crying. It’€™s about my brother. He was murdered in my village. For two hours people were looking for a driver. He lay bleeding. Ultimately, they managed to get somebody to take him to a small town called Dordrecht. He died on arrival. Something tells me that if there was an ambulance (or) an ICU around, my brother would be alive today, and therefore, I’€™m very proud of this, said an emotional Prof. Nongxa.      

Deputy Health Minister, Dr Molefi Sefularo, expressed gratitude to the university for highlighting issues relating to rural health.

‘€œThere is a need to bring rural health more sharply into focus and to delineate the issues for all those who have a role to play in rural health care development.   We really appreciate the launch of this centre. We would like you to become a leading academic centre in the field of human resources for rural health’€, said Dr Sefularo.  

Meanwhile, Prof Ian Couper urged Government to look into the salaries of rural practitioners to ensure that more doctors are attracted to and retained in rural health services.

‘€œOur concern about the salary package under the recent OSD negotiations is that it seems that the rural allowance and the way it’€™s calculated is going to decrease.

The main group that’€™s being left out of the OSD or got a smaller rise is the Medical Officer, Senior Medical Officer group, the bulk of people that staff rural hospitals. So, actually it’€™s a very rural unfriendly package that is being put together’€, he said.

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