The new and comprehensive health sciences university will be built in Ga-Rankuwa, north of Pretoria. This will be done after the unbundling of the University of Limpopo, formerly Turfloop.
The announcement was made by Minister of Health Aaron Motsoaledi and Higher Education and Training Minister Blade Nzimande in Pretoria on Wednesday (10 July).
This was after meetings with stakeholders, including students and employees of the University of Limpopo.
Nzimande said the new university should start operating by 2015 - the same year that the medical faculty at the University of Limpopo would handle its first intake of students.
He said by November this year, they should have appointed both an interim council for the new university and the head of the campus to ensure that the process is completed by the end of next year.
According to both ministries, the purpose of Wednesday"s meeting was to discuss ways on how a smooth transition could be realised. The ministers said a Technical Task Team has been appointed to advise them on the process of unbundling the University of Limpopo.
The team was asked to advise on the establishment of the planned university that would include Medunsa (at the current Medunsa campus) and the establishment of a health faculty at the University of Limpopo campus.
Motsoaledi said the new university would include a school of pharmacy and a veterinary faculty, among others. Quoting the National Development Plan, the ministers said the country was in need of between 700,000 and 1.3m community health workers.
Motsoaledi said the country has a total of 1,300 medical students in Cuba. South Africa, with a population of over 50m and yet it only has eight medical schools while Cuba, with a population of 11m has 27 medical schools.
He said the planned universities in Mpumalanga and Northern Cape would have to include medical schools to enable the country to produce more health professionals.
Source: Sowetan via I-Net Bridge
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