Dr Andrew Ross's idea of sponsoring rural students to study for careers in healthcare has succeeded beyond his dreams. Spotlight sat down with him and chatted to the four students who bagged the initial fully funded scholarships and who went on to land senior roles in public health.

While working as medical superintendent in the late 1990s at Mosvold Hospital in Ingwavuma, KwaZulu-Natal, Dr Andrew Ross had an idea that would shape much of the rest of his life.

"I thought if we could support rural students to study for careers in the healthcare services, and if they could succeed, then return to serve in the rural communities, staffing problems could be solved forever," he recalls.

Ross had been superintendent at Mosvold, a public district hospital in the Lebombo mountains near Eswatini's border, since 1992, when the hospital had only two doctors. "We were stretched to the limit," he remembers.

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At the time, the HIV pandemic had surged into the province's rural corners. The government was not yet providing HIV treatment and rural hospitals were severely strained. Poverty, inadequate water and sanitation and poor basic infrastructure added to the area's high disease burden. As patient numbers increased, healthcare workers at the understaffed hospital became increasingly desperate.

In those years, funded government posts were available, but finding staff was the responsibility of the hospital management. Ross had, since 1992, been recruiting British doctors for short-term paid work at the hospital to fill some of the gaps, but this was...