9 January 2006
As the year begins, there is traditionally lots of health personnel
movement, changing places of work, jobs, resignations, retirements, etc. There
are also many placements for internship and community service that were done
late last year. However, the Department of Health would need to take stock of
how many have reported for work before giving accurate numbers of the vacancies
that still exist. As of December 2004 according to the SA Nursing Council, we
had 98 490 professional nurses and midwives, 35 266 enrolled nurses and
midwives, 50 703 enrolled nurses and auxiliaries.
The Department of Health has a number of strategies to facilitate the
recruitment, and retention of more health professionals to the public health
service. We are working hard to improve the working conditions of health
professional in order to attract them back to the public service.
These range from improvement of conditions of service, improving
remuneration, placement for community service, increase the number of health
professionals trained at health education institutions, payment of scarce
skills and rural allowances, overtime, recruitment of foreign health
professionals through government-to-government agreements, etc.
Department is also interacting with universities and relevant colleges to
explore a possibility of increasing the number of students being trained in
various categories of health sciences.
These strategies are aimed at ensuring that in the long term the State as
the employer possesses sufficient (perhaps even an excess supply) pool of
skills from which to draw its human resources.
The low health professional salaries are one of the causes of the
professionals not staying long enough in public health service. The Department,
in collaboration with sister departments like Department of Public Service and
Administration (DPSA) and Treasury is working hard at improving this
situation.
However, it is important to acknowledge that for those who go to the private
sector or overseas, it would be difficult for government to match the salaries
they earn in those sectors without widening severely the disparities even
within health.
Over the years, our health system has had to deal with loss of experienced
health professionals from rural to urban areas, from public to private sector
and to a less extent from South Africa to the Western countries mainly United
Kingdom, Canada and United States.
It is also important to note that it is not only South Africa that
experiences the phenomenon of professionals migrating.
To tackle these issues, Human Resources for Health Plan will be launched in
April this year. It addresses a variety of issues (details can be found in the
Strategic Framework for the HRH Plan under documents in).
The main focus is on HR planning, development and management including other
strategic matters like stewardship for health, production of health
professionals, international efforts to managing migration etc. The plan also
provides a framework within which all stakeholders can contribute in addressing
these challenges either in their individual effort or in partnership with
government.
Inquiries:
Charity Bhengu
Tel: (012) 312 0420
Fax: (012) 325 5526
Cell: 083 678 7424
Issued by: Department of Health
9 January 2006
