Johannesburg - The country’s largest private healthcare network, Netcare, has confirmed that South Africa is running short of healthcare workers, especially nurses, across the country.
eNCA has revealed that this is putting both the public and private sectors at risk, as the government is partly to blame for imposing restrictions on private-sector nursing training.
The private entity said it previously trained over 3,000 nurses annually, but it's now restricted to a fraction of that number.
Early this month, Health Minister Dr Joe Phaahla warned that South Africa faces a critical shortage of healthcare professionals, pointing to a doctor-patient ratio of 1 doctor per 3,198 people. Phaahla described it as a ‘shocking state of affairs’.
South African Medical Association (SAMA) chairperson Dr Mvuyisi Mzukwa, meanwhile, told Business Tech that this figure lays bare South Africa’s healthcare crisis, which has been reported for years. He said that the sector is understaffed and overworked, and money meant for equipment or patient care is being funnelled elsewhere.
Netcare added that the majority of nurses are set to retire in 2020, which will worsen the problem if it is not attended to urgently.
‘’We urgently need to fill that pipeline with new nurses, young nurses, and people willing to come into the healthcare sector and to be trained as healthcare workers. There is no excuse not to allow the private sector to train more nurses,’’ said Netcare CEO Richard Friedland.
Last week, in a statement celebrating International Nurses Day, the president of the Young Nurses Indaba Trade Union (YNITU), Lerato Maduma-Gova, lamented the shortage of healthcare professionals in the country, saying it has led to nurses working in the public health sector facing almost double the workload.
‘’The country does not have enough nursing personnel, and this started long before the pandemic, and we still struggled terribly during the start of the Covid-19 pandemic,’’ said Maduma-Gova.
The SA Nursing Council (SANC) said the provincial distribution of nursing manpower versus the population of South Africa suggests that there is one nurse for every 218 patients.
Maduma-Gova said often times a job for six nurses is done by one nurse, which is a big concern in a country that has seen an increase in illegal immigrants accessing free healthcare in the public healthcare system.
‘’A job that is supposed to be done by six nurses is being done by a single nurse, and a ward of 30 patients is still being managed by one registered nurse with the assistance of lower-category nurses. But to be very honest, we are running a healthcare system that is very unsafe, and that is very low quality,’’ said Madumo-Gova.
Department of Health spokesperson Foster Mohale said the challenge of shortages varies from one facility to the next.
‘’Some facilities are sufficiently staffed, and others are not. However, it is safe to generally acknowledge that according to the staffing norms, there is a shortage of nursing personnel,’’ Mohale said.
The Star