About 100 students are receiving a daily meal from a feeding scheme initiative run by the Radiography clinical departments at Tygerberg Academic and Groote Schuur hospitals (GSH) in partnership with the CPUT’s Medical Imaging and Therapeutic Sciences (MITS) Department.
The project was started after Estelle Herbert, the MITS Department’s co-ordinator of the BSc Diagnostic Radiography programme at Tygerberg, delivered a talk for radiographers at the hospital on how students were coping and what challenges they might be facing during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Herbert said Tygerberg Hospital staff wanted to know how they could assist the students, which prompted her to do a survey, across all four disciplines, at all hospitals involved in clinical training of CPUT radiography students.
“What came out was that students did not even have a proper meal.”
The radiography staff at the two hospitals and staff of the MITS Department decided to support the students by launching a feeding project.
Radiography staff members at Tygerberg Hospital, Bardene Dreyer, Daphne Manyamala and Theresa Afrikaner, and Nazlea Behardien-Peters and her team of radiographers at Groote Schuur, facilitate the project. Herbert and Dr Merlisa Kemp, Head of the MITS Department, are facilitating the support from MITS who provide non-perishable items to the Radiography clinical departments for use by students in need.
Kemp said the radiographers in the Radiography clinical departments took the initiative to donate bread, spreads, non-perishable items as well as to make soup and sandwiches for students in need.
“Approximately 100 students are reached and meals are provided every day, mainly at lunch time where the responsible staff, together with a few volunteers, will make sandwiches,” Herbert said.
Written by Ilse Fredericks
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