South Africa requires billions of rands of additional investment to avoid severe public sector healthcare worker shortages by 2025, according to a leaked ministerial task team strategy document, reports Spotlight.
The strategy was developed by a ministerial task team and will, once officially adopted, replace government’s previous Human Resources for Health Strategy that expired in 2017, Spotlight reports. Describing the country’s fiscal and economic outlook as “bleak”, the strategy states: “Various analyses indicate a current and projected shortage of skilled health professionals in South Africa. Due to population growth alone, the shortfall in essential health workers will worsen by 2025 if health workforce expenditure only increases in line with inflation.”
The analysis estimated that an additional 97,000 health workers, with community healthcare workers (CHWs) making up about one third, will be needed by 2025 to address inequities across provinces. A second analysis estimates bringing primary healthcare services up to scratch will require an estimated 88 000 additional primary healthcare workers by 2025.
The strategy points to huge disparities between the public and private healthcare sectors which are projected to worsen without immediate policy intervention.
Within the public sector, severe inequities exist both between provinces and between rural and urban areas, with rural areas having significantly lower numbers of more skilled health professionals (notably specialists, nurses and CHWs).
Spotlight reports that in March 2019 the Health Minister appointed a ministerial task team “to support the National Health Department with the development of a HRH Strategy for 2030 and an associated Strategic Plan for the five-year period from 2020/21 until 2024/25”. South Africa has effectively been without an overarching strategy in this area since the HRH Strategy for the Health Sector 2012/2013 – 2016/2017 expired.
Professor Laetitia Rispel of the University of the Witwatersrand chaired the task team which included various leading academics, members of civil society, and senior government employees such as Dr Gail Andrews, deputy director general for health systems and integration and human resources for health, and Gcinile Buthelezi, director for human resources for health.
The task team started its work in April 2019 and a year later in March 2020 a final strategy was present to the Health Department.
Responding to Spotlight, spokesperson for the National Health Department, Popo Maja, said that the strategy had not been made public yet as it first had to be approved by the NHC. Maja said the strategy could not be tabled to the NHC due to the COVID-19 pandemic and that all NHCs have since focused on the pandemic. He did not indicate when the NHC would approve and publish the strategy.
[link url="https://www.spotlightnsp.co.za/2020/09/01/government-strategy-shows-billions-needed-to-avert-healthcare-worker-crisis/"]Full Spotlight report[/link]
[link url="https://www.spotlightnsp.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/2030-HRH-strategy-19-3-2020.pdf"]HRH strategy[/link]