VC CALLS ON NIGERIAN EXPERTS to help Medical School

The Vice Chancellor Prof. Lazarus Hangula has appealed for Nigerian assistance in sourcing suitably qualified staff for the new School of Medicine and the Faculty of Engineering & Information Technology. While meeting a high level visiting Nigerian parliamentary delegation which paid a courtesy call on his office, he said Namibia was battling with the hurdle of human capacity.

Head of the Nigerian delegation, Prof. Jibril Aminu said Nigeria was losing a lot of highly trained citizens to the western world. “Some of them have settled and are working in the USA with no intention of going back home at all. As Africans, we really need to think of ways of retaining these highly skilled people. It is really a problem for Nigeria.” The former academic administrator and MP suggested that UNAM also looks at approaching the Association of African Universities (AAU) to assist. Prof. Hangula remarked that the funding of the AAU was not sufficient. “The AAU gets funding for its operations, which is not enough for interaction,” he said adding that some of the association’s members have been struggling to pay up their membership fees.

Asked what the main focus of the medical school course will be on, Dean of the Faculty of Medical & Health Sciences Dr. Lischen Haoses-Gorases told Prof. Aminu and his delegation that the key focus would be on primary health care in line with the Southern African Development Community’s (SADC) position to get health services closer to the people. “The emphasis is taking the services to where the people are, doctors will work in rural settings.”

Shedding light on the situation in Nigeria, Prof. Aminu said a number of public universities in Nigeria were closed as a result of an on-going industrial strike by unions. This he noted had led to criticism towards to the Nigerian government from some sections of society. He stressed the importance of initiating programmes that would instill a sense of belonging in university staff. “They must feel they have a stake. They cannot just become social critics of society.”