The Hospital Association of South Africa (Hasa) has expressed dismay at the omission of medical skills, in particular that of nurses and doctors, from the recently released critical skills list.
The Department of Home Affairs published an updated list, outlining the skills which are in short supply in the country.
Before this, it was last updated in 2014.
Dr Dumisani Bomela, chief executive officer of Hasa, said the body had cautioned the South African Portfolio Committee on Health against neglecting the development of more medical practitioners.
He based this on statistics released by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which had revealed that South Africa lags far behind a host of comparable countries for nurse and doctor numbers per 1 000 inhabitants, with ratios of 1:3 (compared to Turkey’s 2:1, Russia’s 8:1 and Norway’s 17:8) and 0:8 (compared to Turkey’s 1:9, New Zealand’s 3:3 and Austria’s 5:2) respectively.
In the category pertaining to active medical schools per 1 000 000 inhabitants, South Africa’s ratio of 0:16 similarly lags behind that of countries like Libya (1:88), Brazil (1:50) and Colombia (1:15).
“We made clear how far behind we are in terms of medical skills available and how stalled our production of these skills has become over the years,” said Bomela.
“It is furthermore difficult to reconcile with the 2030 Human Resources for Health Strategy – which, for instance, projects a shortage of 34 000 nurses by 2025 if nothing is done to the falling numbers of nursing aspirants with this critical skills list. In the profession are nurses already over 50 years of age, who will be retiring soon. Medical facilities are struggling to fill posts.”
