KCU Students to be placed on medical internships
KCU Students to be placed on medical internships
The Uganda Medical and Dental Practitioners Council has been directed by the High Court in Kampala to send a list of King Ceasor University (KCU) students to the Ministry of Health for the purpose of nationwide internship deployment.
This is in response to the Uganda Medical and Dental Practitioners Council’s decision to withhold the names of over 100 KCU students from being deployed for internships.
Judge Musa Ssekaana, however, has now issued an order of mandamus, or an immediate order, requiring the council to submit the names of the applicants and other KCU medical graduates for the national medical internship program. This was stated in his judgment from November 30.
Ssekaana further stated that it was unlawful to refuse to send the applicants and all King Ceasor medical graduates who earned their bachelor’s degrees in medicine and surgery since they were entitled to internships.
Two students; Brian Munyambabazi and Ronald Masereka sued the attorney general and the Uganda Medical and Dental Council seeking a declaration that the decision to exclude them and 136 other graduates from KCU in the internship placement was unfair, illegal, unlawful, biased, unreasonable, unenforceable, irrational, null and void and of no legal effect.
Records show that although the attorney general has been exonerated for having been sued wrongly, on July 27, 2023, the ministry of Health issued a press release wherein it communicated that it had received clearance to deploy medical interns to 58 internship centers across the country.
The ministry released a deployment list for the interns under revised terms as guided by the government indicating that they were to deploy 1,901 medical interns within the available budget of a net monthly allowance of Shs 1 million per intern to facilitate accommodation and feeding and that all interns were expected to report to their various training centers by August 3, 2023.
A day later, the ministry forwarded the list of medical interns to the internship placement centers. The list had medical graduates from all universities teaching bachelors of medicine and surgery (MBCh.B) in Uganda and outside Uganda except for medical students from KCU.
The applicants said they studied their course for five years and graduated and as such, in refusing to deploy them and their classmates it was irrational, unreasonable, and unfair more so, since there was no reason given for failure to deploy them.
Ass. Prof Joel Okullo, the chairperson of Uganda Medical and Dental Practitioner’s Council opposed the case saying the National Council for Higher Education (NCHE), together with the council in the exercise of its statutory duty unanimously agreed that the graduates from KCU of the MBChB program could not be forwarded for the pre-registration.
This, he said was after two inspections including one done by the 3rd Joint East African Community Medical and Dental Practitioners Councils/boards inspection team conducted found that it did not meet the minimum standards for training medical students registrable in the East African Community.
They said they had the duty of safeguarding society against ill-trained, unqualified, and inexperienced medical practitioners. However, the students insisted that their university’s medical school was accredited by NCHE to teach bachelor of Medicine and bachelor of Surgery and this accreditation has never been withdrawn.
Court heard that the university has all the facilities to teach the course and during the 3rd, 4th and 5th years when the students do clinicals in Mulago, Kiruddu and Kawempe hospitals together with students from Makerere University. Further, it was noted that the students are taught and trained by the same staff at these hospitals and some of the Medical Council staff have taught the students of King Ceasor University throughout this period of five years.
