South Africa Needs Measures to Attract Foreign and Retain Local Health Care Professionals
Measures are needed to attract foreign health care professionals to
South Africa and to retain South African ones otherwise emigrating
overseas in order to urgently address the country's major shortage
in health workers, according to an IOM report.
The report, Facilitation of the recruitment and placement of
foreign health care professionals to work in the public sector
health care in South Africa, based on a review of health resources
in the country between November 2006 and April 2007 and in
consultation with South Africa's Ministry of Health, assessed the
feasibility of placing foreign health care professionals from
various developed countries and South African migrants into the
public health care sector.
South Africa faces major human resource challenges, particularly in
ensuring adequate staffing in the public health care sector. There
are also substantial differences in health worker density between
the public and private health care sectors, and between rural and
urban areas.
South African doctors and nurses represent significant numbers
of foreign health care workers in western countries such as
Australia and UK. Nearly 7,000 South African doctors are currently
registered in the US, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia in
comparison to the nearly 30,800 registered in South Africa. The
loss of nurses has perhaps been more dramatic with nearly 9,300
South African nurses registering to work in the UK alone between
1998 and 2005.
Latest figures on health worker shortages dating from 2003
according to the Nursing Organisation of South Africa (DENOSA)
reveal 4,000 vacancies for doctors and 32,000 vacancies for nurses
in South Africa.
"South Africa needs to recruit foreign health care workers to
help meet its own shortfall. The cost, human and financial of
losing qualified health workers and having major gaps in health
care is too great. But the current registration system for foreign
workers often discourages those who may be contemplating coming to
work here," says Reiko Matsuyama, IOM's migrant health officer for
Southern Africa and advisor on the assessment project.
One South African study has estimated that the exodus of health
workers trained through public education is costing the country one
billion US dollars a year.
The IOM report also recommends exchange programmes between South
Africa and developed countries involving training assistance and
temporary returns of South African migrant health workers. Other
key recommendations include the establishment of rural centres of
excellence through universities which can facilitate research,
training and information sharing, creating centralised databases
for the recruitment, matching and tracking of health workers, and
establishing a central reference point for information useful for
foreign workers.
Recommendations to help retain South African health workers
including the provision of appropriate incentives as well as
facilitating the training and recruitment of health workers from
under resourced areas and improving the management of health
resources are also made by the report.
To access the full report, please go to:
For more information please contact:
Nde Ndifonka
IOM Pretoria
Tel: +27 12 342 2789
E-mail:
"mailto:nndifonka@iom.int">nndifonka@iom.int