09 May 2017

The Assistant Minister of Health and Wellness, Mr Phillip Makgalemele, has hailed the Institute of Health Sciences Gaborone  for the work that they do.
Mr Makgalemele was speaking during a visit to the institution on Monday.
He said regardless of the challenges they faced, they continued thriving to produce responsible personnel who were wanted all over the world for their services.

He commended the senior management team for the effort and strength they put to provide palliative care training for students and urged them to carry on for the good of the nation.
Briefing the assistant minister, the institute principal Ms Thokgamo Boitshwarelo alluded to high academic staff turnover especially due to transfers, resignations and retirements leaving most programmes functioning at less than the required number of staff.
Ms Boitshwarelo however stated that the institution had always managed to sustain an acceptable standard of quality teaching and learning and graduate students every year.

She said the ministry had been advertising for faculty post but failing to attract lecturers, adding that they institution had also been finding it difficult to retain lecturers with masters qualifications and above.
She therefore called for a retention and attraction strategy saying lecturers should be considered with new entry points from C3-C1 /D4 and also parallel progression where lecture cadres could progress without necessarily being heads of departments, deputies and principal.

Among other things Ms Boitshwarelo mentioned that some programmes like the Dental Therapy, which was offered in Gaborone institute only had been experiencing malfunctioning of equipment and incompatibility of the available equipment to the newly acquired dental chairs which negatively impacted on the completion of clinical practice within the given semester.
She also mentioned that currently the Nurse Anaesthesia programme had not been running for three academic years.

She pointed out that the programme which had only been offered in the gaborone campus had lost a medical specialist and a nurse through resignations,adding that currently they were sending students to Swaziland for that programme.
She requested the assistant minister to take issues of concern that has hit the institution further, adding shortage of staff must be dealt with. Meanwhile she pointed that the institution had collaborated with different stakeholders world-wide who had since been assisting differently, among them mentioning the collaboration with African Palliative Care Association, the American Society of Microbiologists, Ohio University, and Cape Town University adding that they benefited a lot from things such as books, computers and further studies on particular fields. ENDS