Scholarships

WNF provides scholarships to qualified health care workers in Sierra Leone enabling them to join advanced trainings in surgery, obstetrics, pediatrics or internal medicin. 

Mission

Under the name of the Wouter Nolet Scholarship Fund (WNSF), WNF grants awards to students following one of the advanced medical trainings in surgery, obstetrics, paediatrics or internal medicine. Three NGO’s responsible for the trainings, are involved in the issuance process: CapaCare, German Doctors and Partners in Health.

Motives

By supporting students in Sierra Leone who wish to follow medical advanced trainings the number of skilled staff will increase. This will fill the gap in human resources between medical doctors and health care workers and will ultimately lead to task sharing between medical doctors and assistants.

Grant

The monthly grant payments cover the personal costs of the students, including food, clothes, study materials, computer, communication and transport. Accommodation and school fees are absorbed by the NGO’s.

The scholarship applies to the entire period of the 3-year advanced training.

Advanced Trainings

The Norwegian NGO CapaCare, dedicated to medical education and training in developing countries, has originally developed a task sharing advanced training program in basic, life-saving  surgery and obstetrics for health care workers in Sierra Leone.

Following up on CapaCare, two other NGO’s  have developed similar advanced trainings, each for different medical streams: German Doctors for pediatrics and  Partners in Health for internal medicine.

Bachelor’s Degree

Originally, the advanced trainings lasted only three years. Students -after graduation- got a diploma and were only allowed to operate under the supervision of a medical doctor. That seemed not leading to a task sharing transition.

Therefore, the three NGO’s decided to integrate their 3-year advanced trainings into the 2-year basic medical education of the School of Clinical Science in Makeni (SCSM).

Graduates now become Clinical Officers, receive a bachelor’s degree and are equipped with an operating license of the Medical Identical Council in Sierra Leone. They are now allowed to perform the operating tasks, for which they have been trained, independently.