Nokwanda Dlangamandla | kzn@radioislam.org.za

4 min read | 20:00

Since 1999, the Umthombo Youth Development Foundation has offered financial aid and mentoring to students majoring in health sciences from underprivileged rural areas. This non-profit works to ensure that many students from South Africa’s most disadvantaged schools become doctors.

Despite coming from some of South Africa’s poorest schools, Umthombo students outperform ordinary health science students at prominent universities like The University of the Witwatersrand regarding pass rates.

Jesse Copelyn, a health journalist at Bhekisisa, spoke with Radio Islam International.

Umthombo has assisted 524 students in completing degrees in health science subjects like medicine, nursing, physiotherapy, speech and language therapy, audiology, occupational therapy, and pharmacology since its founding in 1999. She claims the scholarship helps students with university tuition, mentoring, and summer internships at public hospitals.

The bursary is contingent, however, and Copelyn said that students are more than willing to comply and that graduates return to work in the rural communities where they were raised for at least as long as Umthombo helped them throughout their studies.

Students applying for the bursary must be admitted into a public university’s health science program. Additionally, they must originate from the rural communities of King Cetshwayo in KwaZulu-Natal, Umkhanyakude in Zululand, or the vicinity of Zithulele Hospital in the Eastern Cape.

Students at Umthombo have excelled academically despite coming from disadvantaged circumstances. Gavin MacGregor, the director of Umthombo, claims that the foundation spends over R56 000 on each student. Donors who support the program include businesses like Discovery and Bidvest and private citizens like some of the foundation’s alumni.

Thulani Ngwenya, currently the medical manager, Hlobisile Nkosie, a fourth-year medical student at Umthombo, and Sibusiso Nxumalo, a fourth-year medical student at UKZN, are all recipients of grants from the Umthombo program.

Listen to the interview with Jesse Copelyn, a health journalist at Bhekisisa with Sulaiman Ravat on Sabahul Muslim.