Gauteng Health MEC, Dr Gwen Ramokgopa, has outlined plans to improve the working conditions of health professionals in the province. Presenting the plan to the finance committee of the Gauteng Legislature, Dr Ramokgopa said the department would undertake a series of measures to recruit and retain health professionals in the public health system.
Human Resources
South Africa: More health staff to be recruited
BuaNews (Tshwane), 10 March 2006
South Africa: Overtime contracts and salaries: a personal view
Critical Health Perspectives Update
"The Friday ward round starts, like any other weekday round, at 7:30 and continues till 11:30. It involves a multidisciplinary team of specialists, therapists and nurses. The children are critically ill. We review each patient and plan management for the day. Our tools include mechanical devices and powerful drugs that support vital functions, and antibiotics. Our decisions have life-changing implications. The potential to do harm is enormous, the responsibility overwhelming. The buck stops with me.
After the round, team members implement the decisions, continuously monitoring changes in the patients’ conditions. Meanwhile new admissions arrive: children who have had major operations, critically ill children with medical conditions.
The afternoon round starts routinely at 4:30. On this Friday night it ended after 7 pm. I went home at 8:57 pm after updating my notes and discussing a child’s condition with her family, leaving two registrars to cover the night. Later, during the night I had 6 phone calls from the registrars to discuss patients." The latest issue of Critical Health Perspectives, produced by the People's Health Movement, examines the issue of the overtime contracts and salaries of health workers.
Further details: /newsletter/id/30884
South Africa: State plans more health workers
Khan, T: Business Day (Johannesburg), 10 March 2006
In a bid to overcome the crippling staff shortages facing public hospitals, the health department has proposed doubling the annual supply of doctors, and increasing the yearly supply of new nurses and pharmacists 50%. The proposals are contained in the health department's latest draft of its National Human Resources Plan, released recently by Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang.
South African community health workers not receiving salaries
Bodibe K: health-e News, 2 December 2010
A total of 65,000 South African community health workers (CHWs) are largely responsible for providing counselling services in the government’s HIV counselling and testing programme, which aims to test 15 million South Africans for HIV by April 2011. Many other government health programmes also rely on this cadre of workers for their success. Most of them are employed by non-governmental organisations through funding from provincial health departments and others. But their contribution to public health may be at risk, as this article reports that CHWs are working full time without any payment, sometimes waiting up to six months without receiving their salaries. There is uncertainty about whether the non-governmental organisations that manage funds for the salaries of CHWs are receiving these funds from government and, if they are, why they are not paying them out as salaries. The Health Department has registered its concern about the problem. Health Department Director-General, Precious Matsoso, said the department is working on a solution and cited an overlap of responsibility between her department and social development services as to blame for the lack of action to address the claims of failed salary payments.
South African government launches health resources plan
I-Africa
Proposals on increasing the number of health workers in South Africa and new rules on the hiring of foreign workers in this field form part of the National Human Resource Plan for Health launched early in April on World Health Day. According to the plan, on the Department of Health's website, proposed staff increases include increasing the current newly-qualified 1200 medical practitioners per year to 2400 by 2014, staff nurses from 5000 to 8000 by 2008 and pharmacists from 400 to 600.
South African health minister promises more doctors and nurses
Child K: Mail and Guardian, 11 October 2011
South African health minister Aaron Motsoaledi has announced that R1.24-billion (US$ 155 million) will be spent to ‘revitalise nursing colleges’ and improve infrastructure to train more nurses, as part of the department's new human resource policy. For the current financial year, the department will spend US$27.5 million, and $64 million per year thereafter. A department spokesperson said nursing colleges standing empty would have to be fixed up so that they were fit for use. South African universities currently train 1200 doctors each year. Earlier this year Motsoaledi asked the deans of South Africa's medical schools to each train 40 more students per year. Wits University was the first to do so by taking in an extra 40 at the beginning of the year at the cost of R8-million. The Wits medical faculty dean said the country was short of every type of medical specialist and it would take a long time to fix because it took six to eight years to train specialists after they had qualified as doctors.
South African initiative to address rural health worker shortages
Yeni A: Health-e News, 13 September 2010
Retaining health workers in rural facilities remains a major challenge facing South Africa and other developing nations. But an initiative in the Western Cape shows that the challenge of retaining health workers in rural facilities can be overcome. After unsuccessful attempts by Tygerberg Hospital to recruit and retain rural health workers, the hospital decided to open a nursing college in the Boland region, a large farming area nearby. Helise Schumann, who co-ordinates the activities of the college, pointed out that 70% of all nursing staff in the Boland area (about 800 nursing staff) have been trained through the school. The school uses a step-ladder approach by first starting with training the school’s own staff, like cleaners, porters, food services aid and laundry staff, so they could qualify as nursing assistants. Neighbouring facilities, like Worcester and a number of district hospitals, also owe their staffing levels to the nursing college. She says the college follows a strict selection process when recruiting candidates. The nursing college trains up to 100 students per year. It targets unemployed people and school leavers.
South African medical staff banned from moonlighting
Newman L: Independent Online, 6 January 2010
The KwaZulu-Natal Health Department has banned nurses and doctors from moonlighting, saying the practice is being abused. Two major health workers' unions have rejected the move, saying their members in the public sector are poorly paid and rely on after-hours work to help them make ends meet. Department spokesman, Chris Maxon, said that it was policy that health workers could not engage in remunerative work while employed by the department. Exceptions had been made in the past with a number of stipulations, among them that extra work should not be undertaken during working hours and there should be no conflict of interests. Nurses' union, Denosa, said that although some staff members might have abused the system, the department should have investigated each case. 'There have been cases, for example, where staff use their days off for extra work and they are tired when they go back to work and book off sick,' Denosa said. 'But (abusing the system) should not be dealt with as a blanket ruling. This type of restriction is not fair. There is a reason why people do extra work and it is because they need to supplement their income.'
South African physician emigration and return migration, 1991–2017: a trend analysis.
Nwadiuko J; Switzer G; Stern J; et al: Health Policy and Planning, doi: 10.1080/17441692.2021.1900316, March 2021
This study used physician registry data to analyse patterns of emigration and return migration only among South Africa-trained physicians registered to practice in top destination countries such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the USA or the UK between 1991 and 2017, which represent the top five emigration destinations for this group. It found a 6-fold decline in emigration rates from SA between 1991 and 2017, with declines in emigration to all five destination countries. About one in three South Africa physicians returned from destination countries as of 2017. Annual physician emigration fell by 0.16% for every $100 rise in South Africa gross domestic product per capita. As of 2017, 21.6% of all South Africa physicians had active registration in destination nations, down from a peak of 33.5% in 2005, a decline largely due to return migration. Changes to the UK’s licensing regulations were seen to be likely affected migration patterns while the Global Code of Practice on International Recruitment contributed little to changes. The authors propose that return migration monitoring be incorporated into health workforce planning.
SOUTHERN AFRICA: Plans to test health workers slammed
Plans to make HIV testing compulsory for foreign health workers aiming to work in Britain are "discriminatory" and insulting to African nurses, nursing unions said on Tuesday. "We are strongly opposed to mandatory testing because this will exacerbate the stigma of HIV positive nurses. We are worried about what will happen to them when they are found to be positive," the President of the Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa (DENOSA), Ephraim Mafalo, told PlusNews.
Further details: /newsletter/id/29260