Cape Town - Health Minister Joe Phaahla says hospitals and clinics have another crisis: 18 804 vacancies for doctors, nurses and medical care personnel – largely due to budget cuts.
This means the department had only a 31% “achievement rate” in filling its vacancies from the previous year, Phaahla said in a Parliamentary reply to DA MP Michéle Clarke.
In June last year, Phaahla told Parliament there was a vacancy rate of 27 137 doctors, nurses and Emergency Medical Services staff across the country.
Clarke asked what steps his department had taken to fill the positions and the reasons that medical students are still struggling to be placed in internships, considering the vacancies.
“As of February 28, there were 18 804 vacant posts of doctors, nurses and medical care personnel. This is a 31% achievement rate in the filling of vacant posts,” Phaahla said.
“The main reason for the recorded vacant posts is general budget cuts introduced by National Treasury. These cuts also affect Compensation of Employment (CoE) negatively resulting in not all posts being filled simultaneously.”
He said the department introduced several interventions, which ranged from the prioritisation of the posts in the annual recruitment plan, prioritisation of the posts for conditional grant funding, filling of replacement posts considered and approved weekly, and advertisements published nation-wide in print media.
He added: “Filling of these vacant posts will be prioritised in all provinces as per above method to ensure that there is no over- expenditure of CoE.”
Phaahla said his department, alongside Provincial Health Departments and National Treasury, have mechanisms to ensure that all eligible South Africans and permanent residents are allocated to accredited medical internship positions within the cycle qualified for by applicants.
“This is evident by the conclusion of allocating 2505 medical interns applicants in the January annual cycle (of) 2023,” Phaahla said.
“Only 55 applicants are still to be allocated as they were not eligible due to various reasons, for example applicants declining the posts and preferring to wait for the next cycle.”