The Minister of Higher Education and Training (DHET), Dr Blade Nzimande, is concerned that the graduate output targets in the human health scarce skills field will not be met by 2014 at the current rate medical training institutions are producing medical professionals.
Dr Nzimande said this at the first meeting the Minister held with the leadership of the South African Medical Association (SAMA) in Johannesburg today.
Linking the matter to national transformational goals, SAMA in turn expressed a concern that even though the department subsidised universities to produce doctors, the output of particularly black doctors was not proportionate to the number of first year black students entering medical schools. The failure rate among black students tended to be particularly high, the association said.
“Government is also very concerned about the throughput rate to the extent that we have met with the deans of scarce skills faculties as well as the leadership of Higher Education South Africa to interrogate the challenges and explore interventions that are needed to meet the national set targets for graduate output in scarce skills areas,” Minister Nzimande said.
The Minister added that there was an even stronger urgency for the department to improve coordination with the Department of Health as DHET was actually responsible for producing the output that would move into the health professionals’ environment after graduating from institutions of Higher Education and Training.
“In our discussions with the deans, we have further highlighted the need to develop a comprehensive programme of tutoring and mentoring first year students as one of the ways of dealing with the low graduate throughput rate in the scarce skills areas,” Minister Nzimande said.
On the issue of establishing a new medical university to replace the Medical University of South Africa (Medunsa), the Minister said the high level Joint Technical Team (JTT) working on this should develop a comprehensive plan with time-lines and milestones towards its establishment, supported by an effective communication strategy urgently to move the process forward.
The technical team responsible for overseeing the process will also provide a full briefing of the process to Minister Nzimande and Minister of Health, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi. It was further resolved to include SAMA as a member of the task team charged with the establishment of the new medical university that will incorporate Medunsa.
The meeting took place at the request of SAMA. Discussions included the current state of the South African Health care training, the transformation of post-graduate training of medical specialists, funding of medical students and the recognition and classification of a post-graduate health management qualification. A follow-up meeting will be held in early 2013 to review progress and discuss other matters of mutual concern.
