Government will find funds to employ jobless doctors by April — Joe Phaahla

Health Minister Dr Joe Phaahla has announced that unemployed doctors who are keen to work in the public sector will be hired by April.

Phaahla says that, working with finance minister Enoch Godongwana, they are trying to get funds to employ the doctors.

“Deployment of appropriate human resources is key to both access and quality and this applies to multiple qualifications and skills within the healthcare teams,” he said on Tuesday.

Phaahla said the medical profession was key in the multidisciplinary teams and they were doing everything to retain as many doctors, nurses, physiotherapists and other members of the teams in the public health system.

“I am therefore pleased to announce that working with the finance minister we have a solution to address the problem of doctors wanting to work in the public service but not being offered funded posts.

“We are going to fund these posts working with the minister,” he said in his input to the first day of the state of the nation debate in parliament.

Phaahla said the details of how the posts are going to be funded will be outlined by Godongwana when he delivers the budget speech next Wednesday.

“Our national teams are working with the National Treasury team to thrash out the details and working with provincial health departments to speed up the process so that by April 1 2024 all those doctors who wish to work in the public sector, all those doctors who want to work, will be able to get jobs,” he said.

“I am confident that through this as we will detail after the budget speech, the provinces will start to make sure that the recruitment and all the processes are attended to and also, I’m quite confident that many of the provinces will bring forward some of the funding, starting in March so that by April those doctors will be working.

“In this regard, I want to say hard luck to those who were wishing to use this as political football in the election campaign ... thinking that there’s a discourse because of the national health insurance and that we won't be able to employ doctors.”

Phaahla said the measures he is working on with Godongwana will give the government sufficient breathing space while it is working on long-term solutions.

The matter, he said, was a typical situation in which the ANC-led government was a victim of its own successes as over the past 15 years it had ramped up the training of doctors both in the local universities and with the Nelson Mandela Fidel Castro programme in Cuba.

Phaahla said the number of graduates has almost doubled in the past 10 years. In 2014 there were 1,338 graduates who entered internship while in 2022 there were 2,511 and this year there are 2,210 new medical interns.

“We are committed to work with the medical association Sama and the trade union Samatu to look at more opportunities for doctors, including in multidisciplinary group practices offering primary health services in the community as we prepare for implementation of NHI, which will contract such services,” he said.

Phaahla said that, as stated by President Cyril Ramaphosa in his Sona speech, the other area of serious interventions to improve quality of health services was the upgrading of infrastructure, including new facilities.