Scholarships
The Wouter Nolet Scholarship Fund (WNSF) provides scholarships to health care workers in Sierra Leone enabling them to join a specialization training in one of the key specializations: surgery/obstetrics, pediatrics and internal medicine.
Advanced Training
Why?
By financially supporting health care workers who wish to follow specialization trainings the number of skilled staff in Sierra Leone will increase. This will fill the gap in human resources in hospitals and will ultimately lead to a form of task sharing between medical doctors and clinical assistants.
What?
The Norwegian NGO, CapaCare, has originally developed an advanced training in basic, life-saving surgery and obstetrics for health care workers in Sierra Leone. The aim of this program was to achieve a task sharing between surgeons and their assistants. Following up on CapaCare, two other NGO’s developed similar trainings, each for different medical specializations: German Doctors for pediatrics and Partners in Health for internal medicine.
Originally, the trainings lasted 3 years. After graduation, students got a diploma and were only allowed to operate under supervision of a medical doctor. That did not seem leading to a succesful task sharing. Therefore, the three NGO’s decided to add a previous 2-year basic medical education to their 3-year specialization trainings. This pre-education is given by the School of Clinical Science in Makeni.
Nowadays, graduates receive a bachelor’s degree, become Clinical Officers and are equipped with an operating license of the Medical Identical Council in Sierra Leone. They are employed in the district hospitals and allowed to perform independently the tasks for which they have been trained.
How?
Applicants for scholarship are selected by an Allocation Committee that uses strict criteria for selection. Besides a Curriculum Vitae and Motivation Letter also the results of the final exams of the previous School of Clinical Science are taken into account.
The grant that students receive covers the personal costs of the students, including transportation, food, clothes, mobile data and communication. Accommodation is taken care of by the NGO's. The scholarship applies to the entire period of 3-years of training, including the last year of housemanship.
