Pretoria - The Gauteng Department of Health and Social Development has committed to increase the intake of nursing students in the next five years to help build an effective health system.
The department said it is looking at increasing the intake of student nurses by close to 400 percent, with 2 660 new nursing students expected to be recruited to start training in 2012.
The department has also committed to increase the intake by 25 percent per annum, in the next five years.
Provincial Health and Social Development MEC, Ntombi Mekgwe, noted that over the past eight years, the department has annually been increasing the number of students admitted for training in its colleges by 20 percent.
She said the number of student nurses admitted for training in Gauteng has increased almost fourfold.
The reopening of two nursing colleges, Bonalesedi and Rahima Moosa, has also resulted in the intake of student nurses growing from 500 in 1998/99 to 1 968 in 2010/11.
Mekgwe has instructed that further attempts should be made to increase the enrolment of nurses, particularly in specialised fields such as midwifery.
"The province needs to produce more midwives to enable us to respond adequately to the challenge of maternal and infant mortality," she said.
Since 2009, the department has also been training pharmacy assistants and clinical associates.
"The first group of these professionals are expected to graduate in 2012 and will be deployed to district hospitals and clinics where they will be able to assess patients, make diagnoses, prescribe appropriate treatment and undertake minor surgical procedures under the supervision of a qualified medical practitioner," Mekgwe explained.
The department will advertise health science bursaries by the end of August 2011. The next nurse intake will be in January 2012.