19 March 2007
Every year, the Department of Health and Social Services receives community
interns and community servers from universities. These are students, whom
according to law, are required to do community service to complete their
academic qualifications. Medical doctors and pharmacists are required to do two
years, the first being internship and the second being community service,
whereas other disciplines only do one year community service.
The deployment of these interns and community servers helps a lot in
alleviating the acute challenges of staff shortages, especially professionals,
in our health facilities. Provinces like ours, which are predominantly rural,
are still confronted with challenges of recruiting professionals, because many
of them are fairly young and still prefer a city life, thus limiting our
ability to adequately resource our facilities. However, over the past years we
have been able to slowly turn this tide, as we are now able to attract and
retain these very scare skills. Currently we have over 500 doctors in the
public service in our province, and have been able to, for the first time 47
fulltime specialists working in our hospitals.
As we receive these interns and community servers, we continue to do
everything possible to retain them once they complete their community service,
although we are faced with a challenge such as where you find other provinces
offering high levels of salaries as entry point for these professionals after
community service. This is the route that the department is contemplating,
although funding remains a challenge.
This year we are receiving 67 medical interns, 13 Pharmacists interns, and
the total is 80.
On those doing community service; we are receiving 124 medical doctors, 32
dentists, 30 pharmacists, three clinical psychologists, 13 dietetics, 11
radiographers, 35 environmental health practitioners, 37 physiotherapists, 27
occupational therapists, 22 speech and hearing therapists, bring the total
number of community servers to 334.
All these professionals are deployed in different facilities in our
province, and this deployment is always based on need analysis, with special
biasness to rural areas.
The event to welcome our interns will be held in as follows:
Date: 22 March 2007
Venue: Ermelo Civic Centre (Msugalikwa)
Time: 10h00
Please note that media is invited.
Enquiries:
Mpho Gabashane
Cell: 082 802 4937
Issued by: Department of Health and Social Services, Mpumalanga Provincial
Government
19 March 2007
Source: Mpumalanga Provincial Government (http://www.mpumalanga.gov.za)
