South Africa suffers shortage of doctors

JOHANNESBURG - South Africa's health system would not succeed if the shortage of doctors was not addressed, Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi said on Monday.

The country wants more doctors to ensure the success of the National Health Insurance (NHI) scheme, the minister told a business briefing here.

He said South African medical schools were currently only producing 1, 000 doctors per annum, far from enough to fill the growing skills shortage.

"Five medical schools are to be rebuilt and start producing 3, 600 doctors per annum as a start, and the universities are to start taking extra medical students," Motsoaledi said.

The government has put aside 450 million rands (about $57.6 million) for the current financial year to upgrade about 30 nursing colleges and 426 million rands (about 54.5 million dollars) was allocated for the initial work on rebuilding five major tertiary hospitals, according to the official BuaNews Agency.

Meanwhile, an amount of 1.2 billion rands (about $154 million) was allocated to refurbish nursing training colleges to deal with the shortage of nurses.

South Africa has 0.57 doctors for every 1, 000 individuals of the population, which happens to be one of the lowest ratios globally.

The country would need to train approximately 2, 400 doctors annually to maintain the current figures on par with population growth.