Onazo Daniso balanced life as a medical student by day and a part-time nurse by night, and her dedication was rewarded when she graduated at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), earning her Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBChB) degree cum laude.
UKZN said the cum laude pass reflects an academic average of at least 75% across all of her modules, a remarkable feat for anyone but even more so for someone who spent years juggling work, study, student leadership, financial hardship and the emotional weight of frontline pandemic duty.
“I have always wanted to be a doctor. I can’t imagine doing anything else. I love my job and think I would have been miserable doing anything else,” said the 29-year-old, who is now an intern at Prince Mshiyeni Hospital in Durban.
She told TimesLIVE her love for medicine began in the Eastern Cape town of Lusikisiki, where she grew up witnessing the healthcare struggles of rural communities.
In 2013, while in matric, she applied to study medicine at the University of the Free State but was accepted to study nursing, her second choice.
Struggle and perseverance
It has been a long journey for her since starting her nursing degree in 2014. She was almost derailed by financial issues, but her determination and tenacity kept her focused.
She wrote directly to the university’s vice-chancellor and the gamble paid off: her first-year fees were cleared and a door opened for a private bursar to fund her studies from the second year.
Her final two years were funded by the National Student Financial Aid Scheme. By 2018 she had completed her nursing degree and had to undertake one year of paid community service.
Earning money felt good, she said, but she felt that she wasn’t where she was meant to be.
“I always told my colleagues I was going back to study medicine. I needed to understand more and to be part of the decision-making,” she said.
Another hurdle remained. Her bursary conditions required her to work for the sponsoring company for three years after her community service. Daniso started saving aggressively, setting aside more than two-thirds of her salary every month. By year-end she had scraped together the R116 000 needed to repay the bursar and some money needed to register at UKZN.
In 2019, she began her medical degree at UKZN – but funding remained uncertain, so she later returned to part-time nursing to stay afloat.
Then came Covid-19. When hospitals filled in 2020, Daniso took shifts in high-risk wards, the “red zones”.
“In December I worked at a private hospital. I was the nursing sister, working six night shifts a week with only one day off. So many patients died. I still remember some of their faces. I hated the system and how powerless it made us feel.”
The trauma caught up with her. She took a break from nursing to protect her mental health but felt the pandemic sharpened her determination to pursue medicine.
“It made me more certain that I needed to become a doctor.”
Despite the pressure of study and work, she served on the student representative council in 2021/2022. In her latest year of study, she was the final year class representative and final year committee chairperson.
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