WSU medical school founder is celebrated
Professor and pulmonologist’s 40-year contribution to healthcare celebrated
The founder of Walter Sisulu University’s medical school, Prof Nolwandle Marina Xabamokoena, has been honoured by graduates of the faculty she helped launch nearly 40 years ago.
Xaba-mokoena, 84, a pulmonologist, was celebrated on Saturday in East London during a special thanksgiving event to honour her contribution as a health and medical pioneer.
The faculty of the then University of Transkei (Unitra) became the country’s eighth medical school in 1984. It provided a community-oriented medical education with the emphasis on primary healthcare.
“I have received many honours before ... but this one was special in that it came after I had been criticised and mercilessly vilified for wasting students’ time,” Xaba-mokoena said.
“It was felt I was an ambitious woman who had a mighty idea of my capabilities. This was said to my pioneer students by people whom I had expected to support me.”
Xaba-mokoena said looking back on the more than 2,000 doctors with MBCHB degrees — many with specialisations and some professors — coming out of the faculty she had initiated, she felt vindicated.
She was inspired to start the faculty by the paucity of qualified doctors, and the suffering of patients who had to wait days, and even up to a week, to get adequate medical attention.
At the time, she was the deputy chief medical superintendent at Mthatha General Hospital.
Before Unitra’s medical school was established, only three of the seven existing medical faculties in SA accepted black students, and the third took in only a token number of students.
This meant there was a 1:45,000 doctor/patient ratio in the country, as against the 1:500 recommended by the World Health Organisation, the professor said.
Though it might seem that most young doctors preferred to practise in bigger cities, Xabamokoena said many of these young people were working in rural hospitals now.
“About 80% of the medical doctors working in Mthatha and surrounding areas are WSU medical school graduates, I learn.
“They can go and bring light to other darkened parts of SA. Some go there to specialise. They spend two years after internship doing community service and this keeps them acclimatised here.”
Xaba-mokoena was born in Willowvale. She matriculated at Healdtown Missionary Institute at just 15, and enrolled for a BSC degree at Fort Hare College, which she did not complete.
A few years later, she began training as a nurse at King Edward Vlll Hospital in Durban, passing her final exams with honours and winning the SA Nursing Council gold medal for achieving the highest marks in the country.
She said at Saturday’s celebration: “I feel as proud of every milestone reached by each Unitra/wsu medical graduate as if it were my personal accomplishment.
“I follow their progress.” Xaba-mokoena said it was important that leaders had courage, farsightedness and loyalty. Effective progress could be achieved by strong nations only if they were able to call upon the loyalty of their citizens to defend and enforce civilised rules of international conduct.
“People have to make genuine sacrifices for it, and loyalty supersedes everything.
“We need people of firm convictions, patriots and optimists
— and that provides vital strength which eradicates corruption and past defeats, and builds future victories.”
She called on the alumni of WSU to form a Dean’s Foundation by subscribing just R100 a month, or R1,000 a year.
“This fund would be used to help the poorest of the poor who have problems in getting their medical education for some genuine reason or another. We would need honest administrators for that.”
Prof Mandisa Kakaza, the first black neurologist in SA, was a student at the medical faculty.
“Though she never taught us, we knew who she was. The faculty would not have been stable without the help of Prof Xaba-mokoena,” Kakaza said.
“We never knew the tenacity and grit that it took for her to establish the faculty. We are the people we are today because of Prof Xaba-mokoena.”