The Eastern Cape department of health on Thursday launched a massive campaign to educate and employ more than 1 000 health professionals to ease the severe shortage of nurses and doctors in the province.
Spokesperson Sizwe Kupelo said the department is seeking students to enrol at 20 nursing colleges across the province at the cost of the state.
”We want to enrol students for a one-year nursing assistant course, a two-year nursing course as well as a four-year professional nursing course. We are inviting students to forward their applications to the department as soon as possible to start a selection process,” he said.
The department will pay the students a monthly allowance. All that is required is a one-off fee of R50 for the one- and two-year courses, and a R1 500 one-off fee for the four-year diploma, he said.
”This money also does not come directly from prospective students but will be taken out from their monthly allowances,” said Kupelo.
A selected 25 students from rural and disadvantaged areas will also be chosen to study as doctors and will begin their course in Cuba, starting in September.
The department said it is looking for about 560 students for the professional nursing course and about 250 people for the one- and two-year courses.
It has already allocated R96-million for health studies.
”Four hundred and seventy three bursaries were handed out to students who are studying to become doctors in the province. We also have the Project 5 000, which was launched last year and with this we hope to recruit 5 000 health professionals by 2010,” said Kupelo. — Sapa