South Africa has only 22 090 nurses to serve more than 50m people dependent on the public health sector, and of these, more than 30% will retire in the next 10 years and a further 38% will retire a decade later.
This, and that there are 5 060 vacancies for various nursing specialities, was revealed by Health Minister Dr Joe Phaahla in an answer to a written parliamentary question from the DA this week.
TimesLive reports that he was “unable to state the envisaged time frame to fill the vacant positions due to general budget cuts that negatively affect the Compensation of Employment” and that the filling of vacant posts were prioritised “where the budgets permit”.
The Rural Health Advocacy Project recently said thousands of nurses were unemployed because of mismatches between the categories being trained and the categories of those needed; inconsistent and poor-quality training; their reluctance to work in rural and remote areas; and unfunded vacancies in the public sector.
Private healthcare groups have repeatedly voiced concern about the critical shortage of nurses and their frustration that private hospitals are restricted from accelerating training to mitigate this.
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
Nursing shortage could spike to 300 000, new report finds
Netcare again warns of SA’s critical nursing shortage
Western Cape nursing shortage: 188 of 4,484 posts are vacant
Changed qualification requirements will exacerbate nursing shortage