KZN Health MEC Dr Sibongiseni Dhlomo has urged all of Mzansi’s students studying medicine in Cuba to focus on their studies.
Dhlomo was speaking to the medical students at Addington Hospital on Tuesday. They are currently back in their home country to do practical work, which started last month.
He said it is important that all of them obtain the qualifications they were sent to Cuba for, so that they can help boost Mzansi’s health status.
“My plea to you is: go back to Cuba and continue doing well in your studies.
“We want to have more doctors in this country,” said Dhlomo, who arranged for the students to be placed in different health institutions for two months.
“Cuba adheres to basic things; they require a medical practitioner to go and do community diagnosis. That is the model of prevention that you must come and replicate here in South Africa.”
Dhlomo said what was being done in Mzansi was totally different, because health-care workers were trained to stay at a health facility, wait for patients, treat them and then go home.
“Your success as doctors will be measured by how many people are not sick, so please become good ambassadors for us,” said Dhlomo.
Some of the med students studying in Cuba were the talk of the town after they were reported to have neglected their studies to preach the gospel on the streets. At that time Dhlomo took a special flight to Cuba to remind them why they were sent there in the first place.
Sabelo Duma (21), a second-year student from Bulwer, said: “I cannot wait to finish my course and be able to apply my skill in the clinics or hospitals of my home town. I am grateful for the opportunity: if it were not for it, I would be sitting at home doing nothing.”
