President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda has approved the reopening of health training institutions to enable final year students to complete their studies and help address the human resource gaps amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mary Okwakol, Executive Director of the National Higher Council for Education, said this in a circular to principals of training institutions and vice chancellors of universities.
Okwakol said that institutions, offering health-related training, will reopen with final-year students undertaking health related courses.
The groups of finalists considered include students undertaking a bachelor’s degree in medicine and surgery, nursing, midwifery and dental surgery.
Others are pharmacy, allied medical professionals and postgraduate students on health-related programmes among others.
“This is to enable students to complete their studies so as to fill the human resource gap the health sector would likely face,’’ said Okwakol.
Museveni, last week, directed the national taskforce charged with spearheading the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic to review the possibility of a phased reopening of schools after they were closed in March.
The phased reopening starts with candidate classes and clinical medical students.
The taskforce is also supposed to review the status of the remaining sectors that are still closed, like tourism as well as the reopening of Entebbe International Airport among others.
As of Sept. 1, Uganda had registered a cumulative total of 3,037 COVID-19 cases, 1,489 recoveries and 32 deaths since the index case was registered on March 21, according to the Ministry of Health. (Xinhua/NAN)
