APA-Cape Town (South Africa) South Africa’s Health Minister Joe Phaahla has announced that hundreds of the country’s unemployed doctors will be placed in hospitals or community clinics in the first week of April.
In making the announcement in Cape Town on Wednesday, the minister admitted that this development was due to public pressure over doctors who had completed statutory community service programmes but remained unemployed in the country.
“I am, therefore, happy to announce that, working with the Finance Minister (Enoch Godongwana), we have a solution to address the current challenge of doctors who want to stay in the public service but could not be offered funded posts,” Phaahla said.
Over the last 15 years, the government has ramped up the training of doctors both in local universities and under the Nelson Mandela-Fidel Castro programme whose trainees are sent to Cuba for training.
Due to this, the number of graduate doctors in South Africa has almost doubled over the last 10 years from 1,338 graduates who entered the internship programme in 2014 to 2,210 this year, according to Phaahla.
Phaahla said that Godongwana would give more details during his budget statement next week on how these posts would be funded for the newly recruited doctors.
“Our national team is working with the finance ministry team to thrash out the details and working with provincial health departments to speed up the process, so that by 1st April 2024 all those who will not be already in posts can be able to start,” the minister said.
NM/jn/APA