Doctors, nurses nowhere to be found
January 19 2007
The shortage of health professionals is back in the spotlight, with the South African Medical Association sounding a warning that even in the private health sector, doctors and nurses are hard to come by.
"(The association) is concerned about the increasing difficulty attracting healthcare professionals to work in the public health sector. There is even a lack of doctors and nurses in the private sector," said association head Dr Kgosi Letlape in a challenge to the health minister.
Dr Manto Tshabalala- Msimang has just returned to work after a long illness, and Letlape said yesterday he would get in touch soon with a view to tackling the healthcare challenges of 2007 and beyond.
His comments follow serious concerns raised last month in the SA Medical Journal which said that, without major intervention, rural healthcare delivery capacity would collapse from next year when a change to the rules governing medical student internship would dramatically cut the number of doctors coming into the field. In 2008 students will have to do a two-year internship for the first time.
The Journal estimates that this will mean a 78 percent reduction in the pool of available, sufficiently qualified community service conscripts for that year.
"Just as the situation rights itself the following year, the three-year contracts of hundreds of foreign doctors will come to an end, progressively depleting the 2 250-strong foreign doctor workforce each subsequent year, unless willing new English-competent recruits are found," it said.
Letlape pulled no punches when he said the emigration of doctors was "an old story", and could no longer be blamed entirely for the shortage.
One of the major problems, he said, was the absence of a medical school in four of the nine provinces, which would create career opportunities and increase research capacity, so beginning to tackle the crisis.
Letlape was highly critical of moves to "dismantle" Medunsa and turn it into a satellite campus of Limpopo University.
In the US, he said, there was a medical school for every two million people, and the country still had a shortfall of doctors.
"In Gauteng, we have three medical schools for seven million people and the Medunsa situation is one of the saddest because it's the institution that trains the highest number of black doctors in the country," Letlape said.
The Western Cape has two medical schools, and there are one each in the Free State, KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape.
According to the Journal, one respected audit five years ago had 23 407 South African-born workers practising a medical profession in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the US, versus 11 332 doctors and 41 617 nurses working in the public health sector here.
But Letlape warned against perceptions that the crisis was limited to the public health sector: "We are not actually training enough doctors and that is starting to impact on the private sector, too.
"Our population has increased, along with demands for better healthcare, and that requires more doctors than we have.
"We can't keep blaming the fact that doctors leave the country. That's always been the case and what we should be doing is factoring attrition into our forecasts."
Letlape said that to rise to the challenges facing the delivery of healthcare in South Africa, "we need to pool our skills and resources to ensure that patients in both the public and private sector receive the best possible care". Read more
The shortage of health professionals is back in the spotlight, with the South African Medical Association sounding a warning that even in the private health sector, doctors and nurses are hard to come by.
"(The association) is concerned about the increasing difficulty attracting healthcare professionals to work in the public health sector. There is even a lack of doctors and nurses in the private sector," said association head Dr Kgosi Letlape in a challenge to the health minister.
Dr Manto Tshabalala- Msimang has just returned to work after a long illness, and Letlape said yesterday he would get in touch soon with a view to tackling the healthcare challenges of 2007 and beyond.
His comments follow serious concerns raised last month in the SA Medical Journal which said that, without major intervention, rural healthcare delivery capacity would collapse from next year when a change to the rules governing medical student internship would dramatically cut the number of doctors coming into the field. In 2008 students will have to do a two-year internship for the first time.
The Journal estimates that this will mean a 78 percent reduction in the pool of available, sufficiently qualified community service conscripts for that year.
"Just as the situation rights itself the following year, the three-year contracts of hundreds of foreign doctors will come to an end, progressively depleting the 2 250-strong foreign doctor workforce each subsequent year, unless willing new English-competent recruits are found," it said.
Letlape pulled no punches when he said the emigration of doctors was "an old story", and could no longer be blamed entirely for the shortage.
One of the major problems, he said, was the absence of a medical school in four of the nine provinces, which would create career opportunities and increase research capacity, so beginning to tackle the crisis.
Letlape was highly critical of moves to "dismantle" Medunsa and turn it into a satellite campus of Limpopo University.
In the US, he said, there was a medical school for every two million people, and the country still had a shortfall of doctors.
"In Gauteng, we have three medical schools for seven million people and the Medunsa situation is one of the saddest because it's the institution that trains the highest number of black doctors in the country," Letlape said.
The Western Cape has two medical schools, and there are one each in the Free State, KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape.
According to the Journal, one respected audit five years ago had 23 407 South African-born workers practising a medical profession in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the US, versus 11 332 doctors and 41 617 nurses working in the public health sector here.
But Letlape warned against perceptions that the crisis was limited to the public health sector: "We are not actually training enough doctors and that is starting to impact on the private sector, too.
"Our population has increased, along with demands for better healthcare, and that requires more doctors than we have.
"We can't keep blaming the fact that doctors leave the country. That's always been the case and what we should be doing is factoring attrition into our forecasts."
Letlape said that to rise to the challenges facing the delivery of healthcare in South Africa, "we need to pool our skills and resources to ensure that patients in both the public and private sector receive the best possible care". Read more
posted by Jopie Fourie at 10:20 PM
1 Comments:
Other than the Pfizer manufactured anti-impotency medicine viagra, you can also avail of other various other natural erectile dysfunction cures such as herbs, amino acid, body steroid supplement et al to relieve yourself from the grip of impotency. All these treatment procedures are termed as natural Viagra and to known more on these natural erectile dysfunction treatments, log in to the website http://www.viagraforce.com.
Post a Comment
<< Home