Middle-level colleges offering medical courses have called on the Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS) to review the cluster system for health programmes.
Addressing the press on Saturday, March 15, the stakeholders, under the Association of Medical Training Institutes of Kenya (AMTIK), urged the placement service to consider lowering the current cluster points for medical courses to allow more students to enroll in the programmes.
While acknowledging the significance of medical courses, the stakeholders, led by their leader, Dennis Oketch, noted that the middle-level colleges offered courses that were responsive to both local and international needs.
According to the Association members, only 25 per cent of the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) students attain the minimum grades for medical courses, thus hindering growth in the sector.
“One of the reasons why most parents do not take their children immediately when they finish high school is because the learners get low grades, such as D, D+, and D-, and these children lack a place to go,” noted one of the stakeholders.
“There are so many medical colleges in Kenya; we want to come together and streamline the sector. We have many problems that we want to address, particularly in colleges,” she added.
During the press conference, the stakeholders encouraged Form Four leavers to consider courses in medical engineering and clinical medicine as the demand for professionals in these fields continued to grow.
They also went ahead to highlight health records, public health, and perioperative theatre studies among the lucrative courses whose demands have grown internationally.
The proposal comes weeks after KUCCPS opened its portal for the Kenya Medical Training College (KMTC) course applications for the March 2025 intake.
KUCCPS Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Agnes Wahome, who spoke on February 25, called on eligible Form Four leavers who sat the KCSE examination from the year 2000 to 2024 to apply for the slots in the medical field.
She noted that KMTC had increased the number of campuses offering popular medical courses such as Diploma in Kenya Registered Community Health Nursing (49 campuses), Diploma in Clinical Medicine and Surgery (30 campuses), Certificate in Community Health Assistant (47 campuses), and Certificate in Health Records and Information Technology (36 campuses).
