Kisii hospital to offer medicine classes

Kisii; Kenya: Kisii University has reached an agreement with Kisii Level Five Hospital that will see it start medicine courses next year.

Vice Chancellor John Akama said the university would admit its first batch of medicine and surgery students in the next academic year.

The Kisii government has been pushing for the upgrading of the hospital into a teaching and referral facility.

"This will boost the number of graduate doctors from the current 600 to 2,000 per year in the country," said Prof Akama.

The hospital hopes to attract and retain more specialists, having signed several memorandums of understanding with international health facilities.

Through this collaboration, lecturers at the School of Health Sciences will offer consultancy services at the hospital.

The university's School of Health Sciences started in March 2010, initially offering diplomas in clinical medicine and medical laboratory sciences. 

Biomedical sciences, nutrition, community health, public health, nursing and clinical medicine have since been introduced.

The hospital currently has 450 beds and a daily workload of 900 outpatient attendance and 200 admissions.