MKU’s school of medicine beats old guards to top list

A university was on Saturday ordered to shut down its medical school and distribute its students to other institutions in the country.

Two others must immediately stop admitting new student to medicine degree programmes because of quality concerns. This is according to a report by the medical and dental practitioners boards and councils across East Africa released Saturday.

The report, which follows the inspection of 13 medical and dental schools, has directed that Uzima University College in Kisumu closes its medical school, which has about 300 students, because it is operating below the minimum standards. The decision to close the institution will be reviewed in six months following another inspection.

PENALISED

Also penalised are Kenyatta University (KU) and Kenya Methodist University (KeMU), which have been ordered to suspend admission of new students.

The inspection was carried out between March 2 and March 6 by a team of technical health experts from the East African Community (EAC) partner states.

Uzima was called out for conducting lectures in incomplete buildings, failure to establish departments for basic sciences, over enrolment and gaps in staffing.

It scored 49 points out of 100, leading the inspectors to conclude that “the school has not complied with the minimum requirements for training of medical students and should therefore close the institution and redistribute its students to other medical schools.”
KU, one of Kenya’s oldest universities, was ordered to stop admitting students for medicine and surgery programmes for failure to follow EAC guidelines on training and quality.

The inspectors said they will carry out continuous assessment and write another report on compliance within six months. The university scored 54 per cent in the survey.

SURVEY
KeMU, which scored 59 per cent in the survey, was cited for over enrolment, poor staffing ratios in both pre-clinical and clinical programmes, infrastructure gaps, weaknesses in staffing and lack of accommodation for clinical students next to a hospital.

The report, however, makes it clear that, apart from Uzima, all continuing students in the other universities including Kenyatta and Kenya Methodist will upon graduation be eligible for recognition within the EAC partner states.

In the overall survey, Mount Kenya University (MKU) scored the highest with 82 per cent beating Kenya’s oldest and biggest university, University of Nairobi (UoN), which scored 58 per cent in medicine and 68 per cent in the dental programme.

Other top performers are Maseno University with 81 per cent, Kisii University with 80 per cent and Moi University with 61 per cent in the in medicine programme.

The report ordered UoN to establish additional training sites in order to address the needs of the large number of students and ensure it is ready for another inspection within 12 months.

The inspection focused on governance, academic programmes, human resource, student affairs, infrastructure, research and innovation.

Commission for University Education (CUE) Chief Executive Officer Mwendwa Ntarangwi, who is in Kigali on official duties, said on the telephone Saturday that he has not seen the report but will comment on it once he sees it.

EDUCATION COMMITTEES

The report was released in Nairobi by the team of inspectors, which was chaired by Dr Nyemazi Alex, a member of the Rwanda Medical and Dental Council and the chief executive of the Kenya Medical and Practitioners and Dentists Council Daniel Yumbya.

Members of the team included registrars and chairpersons of education committees, medical and dental councils in EAC, and representatives of the CUE, Kenya Health Professions Oversight Authority and the EAC secretariat. The report is done in line with a directive of the 19th Ordinary Meeting of the EAC Sectoral Council of Ministers of Health in Nairobi on November 1, last year.

The team released a similar report for Uganda last month, recommending that Uganda Christian University School of Medicine be closed down for not meeting the required standards.

Makerere University School of Dentistry and St Augustine International University were also directed to suspend further admission of students after the inspection concluded that they don’t have the required equipment and infrastructure to continue training students.

The team will inspect medical and dental schools in Tanzania from April 19 to 26 and those in South Sudan from June 15 to 19.