Yesterday, the Medical Students at Makerere University, through their student-leadership body commonly known as the Makerere University College of Health Sciences Students’ Association, lodged their petition to the office of the College Principal.
In this petition, the Medical Students informed the College Administration that they were not ready to resume and that they needed at least a fortnight to prepare for the resumption. It will be recalled that by the time the University was closed, these students were preparing to commence their end of Semester I 2020/2021 examinations.
In the petition signed by the College President Mr. Ignatius Asasira, the lack of readiness was attributed to a number of factors, among which was the fact that the dissemination of feedback from the student fraternity had revealed that the students, in general, had been absorbed in a gross academically divergent environment throughout the lockdown.
Additionally, that over 60% of the students had been engaged in economic activities to supplement family income and that over 50% of these students had been left home in charge of their younger siblings.
Furthermore, approximately10% of the medical students had unfortunately, lost bread-winners in their respective families due to Covid-19. The feedback obtained from the students further indicated that over 20% of the students had contracted Covid-19 and 4% had been severely affected and accordingly hospitalized.
It was also discovered that over 5% of the students were considering the option of dropping out of their respective programmes and courses owing to the unprecedented difficulty in balancing between their academic obligations, and the novel life challenges that they must now deal with, as a result of the pandemic.
In unison, these Medical Students had at approximately 96.5%, agreed that they had very little time if any at all, to revise, owing to the pressing domestic chores and income generating activities they had had to attend to.
To that end, they needed a two-week period to prepare financially, physically and mentally for the pending exams if they were indeed to embrace the directive to return to the University. These Medical Students contend that the College Administration glaringly ignored all these challenges and whereas the College Administration was ready to resume, they were not.
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