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'Health-professionals crisis looming'
Tamar Kahn,
2005-05-20

The treasury's deputy director-general, Ismail Momoniat, warned yesterday of a looming crisis in the supply of health-care professionals, and pointed an accusing finger at the health department for its failure to produce a human resources strategy to tackle the problem.

This is one area where you need a bit more central planning, he told delegates to a conference on the financing and training of health-care professionals. He said there was negative or low growth for the supply of most categories of health-care professionals in the public sector. The number of specialists had fallen by 12% to 3127 in the two years to February this year, the number of doctors dropped 1,2% to 11135, and the number of nurses had increased slightly, up 5,4% to 43060. The treasury has earmarked about R4,64bn over the next three years for the provinces' health professions training and development grant. Conference participants heard that provincial health departments tended to see the grant as a means to pay for the provision of the training platform, in which students learn on the job, and want universities to pay for the teaching time of the health departments' specialists who do the training. He said it was difficult to track how the grant was spent. Another problem was that financing was completely delinked from supply and planning considerations. Referring to the declining number of specialists in rural provinces such as Northwest and Northern Cape, Momoniat said: It's clear that the grant isn't working, so why should we continue with it? The health department's head of human resources, Dr Percy Mahlati,yesterday declined to explain the delays in his department's efforts to develop a blueprint for human resource development. We have a document that is being considered by the National Health Council and, once approved, it will be released for public comment, he said. Momoniat said treasury had noted lots of disturbing trends in the public sector's supply of health-care workers. We are going to have a crisis, he said, predicting a decline in the aggregate number of health-care workers in the face of a growing population. There's a good case for increasing production - we need more of everybody from what I can see. Mononiat said there had been a 28% increase in the number of pharmacists working in the public sector in the two years to February 2005, but noted this had come off a low base of 1256. The treasury was also concerned about the distribution of health-care professionals, as two-thirds of all doctors (7411) worked in Gauteng, Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal. Most doctors worked in urban areas, leaving rural people under-serviced, he said. Momoniat echoed concerns expressed on Monday by Education Minister Naledi Pandor about a lack of clarity in the funding of the training of health-care professionals. (Source: Business Day, May 18, 2005).

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