SA’s Health Department has advised students wanting to study medicine overseas to ensure that the qualifications of their prospective institutions are recognised in the country. The New Age reports that this comes as more than 13 medical graduates in KZN have been barred from practising after graduating from universities in China, Turkey and Mauritius. The medical qualifications have to be recognised by the Health Professionals Council of South Africa (HPCSA), which then grants licences to doctors before they practise.
"We would like to warn parents and students themselves to check first and ensure that the universities where they intend studying are recognised here in SA," KZN Health MEC Sibongiseni Dhlomo said. "We are very strict about that. We have to protect our profession and our SA healthcare users by ensuring that they are handled only by people who have received the approved medical qualifications."
Dr Mark Sonderup, vice-chair of the South African Medical Association, said many overseas qualified graduates are unable to practise in SA. He said the lack of planning in the country exposes wannabe doctors to the abuse of bogus medical universities.
"We need to speed up the process of creating more local medical schools to avoid such unpleasant situations. Parents pay a lot of money to send their children overseas, only to find out that the institutions are not recognised," Sonderup said. He said there was a need for doctors training in the Eastern Cape and Limpopo to increase the capacity for the country.
Sonderup said some overseas universities have identified a lucrative money making strategy in luring and exploiting desperate medical students. "There are such institutions in the Eastern Europe which offer unrecognised medical training. In South Africa there are a number of graduates that need to be produced but we have a very limited capacity to do so," he said. Sonderup noted that this is a significant challenge for the country, adding that the failure to increase the capacity of medical teaching and training resources could expose more be doctors to further exploitation due to desperation.
The council was collecting information to show the extent of the problem in the country.
[link url="http://thenewage.co.za/149466-1016-53-Cautions_for_medical_students_studying_overseas"]Full report in The New Age[/link]