Netcare CEO Richard Friedland has said there is a glimmer of hope that the company might finally be able to train more nurses – not a moment too soon, as statistics show a shortage of more than 150 000 nurses in the country, reports News24.
Currently, Netcare is training just a fifth of the number of nurses it trained 10 years ago, and Friedland said this week that after years of frustration, there is finally progress that these numbers could soon grow.
According to a 2020 report by the Department of Health, the Hospital Association of SA, and consulting firm McKinsey, there could be a shortfall of up to 166 000 nurses in the country by 2030.
And while the growing local population requires more nurses, the number of retiring nurses is outpacing the number of nurses qualifying at training facilities.
Despite the local shortage of nursing skills, the Department of Health has kept Netcare waiting for accreditation for its nursing programmes for several years.
The company operates five nursing and ancillary healthcare campuses across four provinces, offering various different programmes, including diplomas, higher certificates, bridging courses and short courses.
In 2022, Friedland said Netcare was training just 10% of the 3 500 nurses it had been training in 2016. He said that the company had been waiting for three to four years for accreditation to train more.
News24 previously reported that the SA Nursing Council (SANC), with a chairperson appointed by the Minister of Health, had restricted the number of trainees in “the interests of quality control”.
SANC argued that training programmes, including those offered by Netcare, don’t have the resources needed to take on more, and the council “cannot act irresponsibly by having more students than patients in clinical facilities”.
But on Monday, speaking to News24 after the release of Netcare’s annual results for the year ended September 2025, Friedland said there “has been a lot of progress” on the matter.
“Fortunately, we’ve now been given permission and accredited to be able to train lots, and we hope that those accreditations will continue and that the numbers we were granted will increase,” he said.
“We’ve just received accreditation for our postgraduate degrees, and feel a lot more comfortable that in the coming years we’ll be able to hopefully meet the (nursing) demand.”
The company was now at 22% of the nurses it trained in 2016, he added.
He flagged the appointment of a new chief nursing officer at the Department of Health as a big change. Dr Mirriam Matandela, who has been in the position since September, is a registered nurse with a PhD in health service management.
She previously served as the CEO at Aliwal North Hospital in the Eastern Cape and as a director in the Health Department.
“She is extremely pragmatic and visionary, and we are seeing a lot more accreditation being granted,” Friedland said.
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
Netcare again warns of SA’s critical nursing shortage
Netcare frustrated by bureaucracy restricting nurse training
Nursing council denies preventing private hospitals from training nurses
Nursing Council resists training of new nurses, despite dire shortage, HASA conference told
Changed qualification requirements will exacerbate nursing shortage
Jobs summit to consider Netcare proposal for 50,000 new nurses