Defence School of Health Sciences

The History of the Defence School of Health Sciences is tied to the history of the Africa National Congress movements by the freedom fighters who sought asylum in present day Zambia from South Africa. This was instigated by the conflicts between anti-apartheid movement by blacks and the Dutch in South Africa during the decolonization process. The settlements of these asylum seekers were dotted all over Lusaka in areas such as Kamwala (Present day Defence Services Command and Staff College), UTH area (elephant houses around LBTC), Mtendere and Emmansdale. The fights continued even in Zambia each time the two groups met at UTH when seeking for medical help. To prevent the fights from exacerbating, the panacea was arrived at by the government of Zambia to develop an alternative health care service institution that would only attend to the white exile community. In this case, African National Congress Clinic (ANC CLINIC) was born in the 1980s and was later renamed to Defence School of Health Sciences (DSHS). To ensure safety of the freedom fighters from attacks by the black South Africans, the clinic was guarded by the Zambia army soldiers. Furthermore, it is also worth to note that the clinic was fully stocked with medical equipment, wards, offices and kitchen while medicals personnel commuted from UTH on a daily basis.

In 1994 after the ANC influences was over, the clinic was handed over to the Ministry of Defence (MOD) who later turned it into a residential place for Zambia Army sports personnel up until the year 2003 when it was changed into a medical School with the Aim of training health personnel primarily for the Zambia Defence Force (ZDF). This was as a result of the regulations and guidelines provided by the national regulatory and accreditation bodies to mitigate the lacuna of health care providers that affected the medical Institutions in the Defence Forces. This was facilitated under the auspices of Defence Force Medical Services (DFMS), a wing in the Ministry of Defence. Colonel Mwale was the first commandant tasked to spearhead the program. Conversely, he could not roll on his assignment as he died after a short illness. With the view of enhancing continuity and subsequent achievement of the goal of the School, Colonel A. Phiri was appointed in 2004 as Commandant ANC clinic to continue from where her predecessor had left. The story is told that she did remarkable modern infrastructure developments that changed the face of the school. In this view, she renamed the school to Defence Force School of Health Sciences (DFSHS).  The Military Medical Assistants (MMAs) program finally started in 2007 after the renovations were done and this time under the command of General P. Njovu. The program was conducted for three months and was meant to upgrade the MMAs so as to maintain a professionally competent workforce through continuous professional development (CPD). In 2008, General E. Malyangu took over from his predecessor and was assisted by Col G.N. Kasonde as the first commanding officer and Col. E. Sosala as Chief Instructor. The Laboratory Assistant (LA) and Pharmacy Assistant (PA) programs were subsequently introduced in 2008 and 2009 respectively. The idea was to produce pharmacists and Laboratory Technicians to fill up the gap thereby providing an effective and efficient medical service delivery in the defence force. Furthermore, a number of basic and upgrading programs for MMAs took place from 2010 to 2013 side by side infrastructure developments in the institution. During this time, General Muchemwa, Colonel G. Sandala and Colonel J. Hamudebwe were commandant, Commanding Officer and Chief Instructor, respectively. In 2014, the Administration so a need to introduce a Registered nursing program to complement the existing efforts in order to efficiently and effectively attain the human resource for Health requirement in the ZDF. This first intake graduated in 2017. The initial mandate to train and produce skilled and competent health professionals for ZDF was latter revisited to include civilian personnel with the view of not only  satisfying the human resource requirement in the ZDF but also as a nation. In this case, the second and third intakes of registered nursing includes civilians, besides military personnel. Arising from this new development, the name of the school was changed to Defence School of Health Sciences (DSHS).