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A medical doctor seen holding a Stethoscope.
The South African Medical Association Trade Union (SAMATU) says doctors in public hospitals are being pushed beyond safe working limits, while hundreds of qualified colleagues remain unemployed.
The union claims doctors already in the system are working excessive hours beyond guidelines set by the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA).
At the same time, more than a thousand funded posts for doctors remain vacant across the country.
SAMATU has warned that the situation is not only unfair to unemployed doctors but could also put patient safety at risk.
SAMATU Junior Doctors Committee Chair, Dr Talente Biyela, explains: “Definitely … and this is an ongoing conversation that we have been having with Sama. Um, you’d understand that at the beginning of the year, we ran a poll so that we’re able to get the correct statistics from our colleagues. Now, we know that this has been a perennial problem where our post-community service doctors are unemployed, right?”
“So on the poll, we actually found out that over 1,481, um, colleagues who are post-comm serv [post-community service] were unemployed at the time. And when we went to the Minister of Health, it turned out that they would have, uh, employed only 480,” adds Biyela.
Below is the full interview with the SAMATU Junior Doctors Committee Chair:
