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HR plan far from ready
Health-e
2005-06-03

Government's plan to address the critical shortage of nurses and doctors is months from developing practical guidelines.

Government's long-awaited human resource plan, promised to the public by the end of March by Health Minister Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, is not likely to be released until July. The National Health Council (formerly Min MEC) is expected to consider the draft plan when it meets at the end of June. Explaining the delay, the Health Department's Dr Percy Mahlati said that Tshabalala-Msimang first had to discuss the plan with provincial MECs but had not yet been able to as she had been out of the country."As soon as she comes back she'll be sitting down with the MECs, going through the document, and then the process will follow from there so that we can be able to develop a plan that will then have to be scrutinized by the relevant bodies, including Cabinet," said Mahlati.

Once Tshabalala-Msimang has signed off the plan, public consultations would begin, he added. The department expected two months of consultations which would include written submissions on the document and targeted one-on-one meetings. But the practicalities of dealing with the critical shortage of doctors and nurses is far from being addressed. According to Mahlati, all that has been developed so far is "a strategic framework for the HR Plan" which addresses the "guiding principles, the strategic objectives, and how to do these things". According to Mahlati, the strategic framework was developed out of a meeting of stakeholders including trade unions in November and a consultation in January with education institutions that train health staff. "We are on the verge of taking a product of consultation, research and looking at our own experiences as a South African health system. and then saying to the stakeholders 'this is what we have'. The next stage is to make sure that we are able to attach the numbers, the time-lines and all the necessary resources that are there," said Mahlati.

The framework outlines experiences in other countries and trends influencing South Africa. The actual HR plan is to priorities three areas: the education of new health staff, the development of current staff and the management of human resources. We have a document that starts saying: 'if we are to be able to cater sufficiently for the South African people in terms of human resources in health care, do we need to increase doctors or not? Do we need to increase the production of pharmacists or not? "So that then when we sit down with institutions we can be able to look and say: Do we have capacity to increase the numbers because that needs not only the physical infrastructure," said Mahlati.

"For instance, we've got a challenge of the shortage of pharmacists in this country. Now we need to increase the number of pharmacists that we train in this country, in what numbers should we produce them, over what period of time, and what are the resources that are needed for that. Do we have enough people teaching in the pharmacy schools who would be able to handle the load? Will we need to subsidise students that are going through pharmacy? If so, how much subsidies and where do we get the money so that Briefing Parliament's Health Portfoilo Committee last week, Mahlati told MPs he expected areas of debate on the new plan to be centered on:

. the introduction of new health training categories

. debate on norms and standards

. training targets and who should be targeted

. migration, both internal (from rural to urban) and global

. funding of health education and training.

(Source: Health-e, May 31, 2005)

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