The Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (MUHAS) Deputy Vice Chancellor responsible for Academic, Research and Administration (DVC-ARC) Prof. Appolinary Kamuhabwa opened the stakeholders meeting to discuss five new curricula which have been developed from different departments at MUHAS.
Speaking at the meeting the DVC-ARC said that stakeholders are important in the process for developing academic curricula at MUHAS. He therefore said that the meeting was convened in order to get the views of the stakeholders with regards to the developed curricular.
“I believe the authors of these curricula have ensured that the contents of the curricula reflect the needs of community in the health sector”, Prof. Kamuhabwa said. “We need your views in order to improve these curricula before they are processed for approval and implementation“.
Prof. Kamuhabwa said that it is important to consider things like, “do we really need such professional experts in our communities? To what extent are they needed? and how about their job market in the government and private sectors?”. These questions are important to be addressed when reviewing the curricula because competencies and professionals to be trained using these curricula should be able to address health challenges in the communities and have opportunity to be employed in the government and private sectors.
Furthermore, emphasized that benchmarking should be done in other countries to find out the existence of similar programs and their relevance in the health sector. The DVC-ARC further said that in developing curricula there will be leaning objectives, expected competence and learning outcomes. He said it is important to know what kind of competences do we need in this century and what kind of technology can be used to support delivery of these new curricula. “So we really need to discuss these issues in order to ensure that these curricula are in line with the current health challenges and technological advancement”, he added.
Prof. Kamuhabwa further thanked the stakeholders for accepting to participate in this meeting and said that the MUHAS rely on and appreciate their views in every curriculum that they are going to discuss. He further said that the University will eagerly be waiting to receive feedback from them which will be incorporated in these curricula for further processing through the MUHAS Senate and submission to the Tanzania Commission for Universities for accreditation.
The stakeholders in this meeting included representatives of employers, supervisors, professional councils, professional associations, alumni, academic staff, students, training institutions and Association of Private Heath facilities.
The meeting took place on 08th of April 2022 at MUHAS, and during the meeting participants were able to contributed and discussed all the five curricula which are (i) Bachelor of Science in Audiology, Speech and Language Pathology, (ii) Bachelor of Science in Occupational Therapy, (iii) Masters of Science in Rhinology, (iv) Masters of Science in Women Imaging, and (v) Masters of Science in Nutritional Epidemiology. After approval and accreditation by TCU, implementation of these curricula is expected to start in the next academic year of 2022/2023.
