We welcome South African medical and allied health students who are keen to do their electives in a rural setting. We prefer students who are in their fourth or fifth year of study (undergraduates) – with some exposure to clinical medicine and basic patient examination skills. Unfortunately, we are not able to accept students from other countries. We prefer students to come for at least 4 weeks, but realise that some universities still only have a 2 week elective.

Although we are a small hospital we offer a good hands-on experience that will help you gain practical skills as well as practice managing conditions commonly associated with poor communities. We are keen to share our passion for rural health with students already keen on rural health themselves as well as with those who just want to see the “other” side of medicine.

Please read the information sheet entitled Booking and Planning Your Elective for more information, which we will email to you. We will also send you our Student Handbook with more information about your time at the hospital, which you are welcome to download. As some university servers in particular block email from Gmail accounts please make sure that our email address is marked as accepted in your message rules.

​Bookings availability update

Please note our email for elective bookings: students AT zithulele.org Please be patient wrt getting a reply. It's not an email account we monitor daily.

Bookings for 2022 are filling up fast! But there's still space.

When contacting us about an elective, please state the number of students who want to come in your first email - we often find "1" becoming 2 or 3 or even 4 which makes planning impossible! 

Please also note the elective cost and details about the accommodation in "Booking and Planning your elective," including the deposit amount and that you need to provide your own bedding.