About 180 of SA's community service doctors are sitting at home waiting for placements in hospitals, despite dire staff shortages, reports The Times.
Doctors who have completed their degree and two years of internship are legally required to do a year's community service in government hospitals and several of the unemployed doctors spoke on condition of anonymity. Said one: "If there are no jobs for community service why force it on us?" She said she phoned the Health Department on a daily basis but struggled to get any information from it. "I want to know which day I must phone and by which date they will place me." She has also been regularly visiting hospitals to see if there were vacancies, and located a Pretoria hospital that had 10 vacancies for doctors who had completed community service.
The report said an e-mail sent by the Health Department said this week it could not place doctors until all the provinces had submitted information on which hospitals still had vacancies. In another e-mail, a hospital staff member states that the medical facility is unable to directly hire community service doctors and must wait for instruction from the provincial department of health.
One doctor moved back in with her parents because she cannot afford to live on her own while she is unemployed. She said two friends had volunteered at a hospital in the hope that they would be paid and offered contracts. She said that they, like her, were finding it hard to live without a salary. Another said: "I have not heard a single thing about placement. I have been trying to phone the department but it just keeps ringing. Three different doctors were told by officials in three provinces last week that the number of doctors awaiting jobs was between 180 and 200.
The Junior Doctors' Association of South Africa (JUDASA) says it is disappointed by the failure of the Department of Health (DoH) to appoint dozens of community service doctors in the country. The organisation notes in a statement carried on Politicsweb that many doctors are currently unemployed after applying multiple times to DoH to start their compulsory year of community service. These doctors were allowed to apply and reapply for posts only to find out after several months that there were limited funded posts in certain provinces such as Gauteng.
"We are of the view that this is a result of the disorganisation of DoH which started the application process very late and did not take into account the views of the affected people when they made decisions. Since community service is meant to help rural hospitals, the department should not wait for so long to tell doctors that they have few posts in the cities.
"As an organisation JUDASA has tried multiple times to prevent this situation and communicate with DoH in order to be part of meetings that affect the placement of doctors. However, DoH did not involve any organisation that represents doctors and as a result doctors are left unemployed in a country that is facing a serious shortage of doctors.
"It is quite shocking that every year DoH seems to be surprised that there are new doctors who are due to start work in various provinces; either doctors are not appointed in time or those appointed are not paid in time. This makes us wonder if DoH understands that many people's lives are endangered because there are no doctors to attend to them when they are sick. We plead with the department to take the lives of our citizens seriously and stop mistreating their doctors."
[link url="http://www.timeslive.co.za/thetimes/2015/01/16/jobless-doctors-given-runaround"]Full report in The Times[/link]
[link url="http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page72308?oid=908147&sn=Marketingweb+detail&pid=90389&utm_source=Politicsweb+Daily+Headlines&utm_campaign=e9934a70b4-DHN_Jan_20_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_a86f25db99-e9934a70b4-130040921"]Full Politicsweb statement[/link]