ANCYL statement on the urgent call for action to employ 1000 unemployed medical doctors

5 January 2023

The ANCYL will urgently meet with the Minister of Health to convince him to secure funding for 1000 unemployed medical doctors who have completed their medical intemship and community service training.

The ANCYL calls upon the national department of health to use the NHI pilots funding from national treasury to employ the current 1000 unemployed medical doctors who remain unemployed following the completion of their two years of medical internship and one year of community service. This is a disheartening statistic to the ANCYL which does not only signal a loss of valuable medical expertise but also underscores the paradox of understaffed hospitals amidst a surplus of ready and willing medical practitioners.

The ANCYL is of the strong opinion that the patient to doctor ratio will continue to worsen if we don't employ these 1000 unemployed doctors in the country. The patient-doctor ratio negatively affects the quality of services provided by the currently employed doctors which can easily be remedied, if we increase the number of doctors employed to help our communities.

The 2022 patient to doctor ratio was 1:3198 which in actual fact means that there is 0.31 doctors per 1000 patients and that ratio will be worsen if we don't find funds to employ this current group of 1000 unemployed doctors, while the population continues will continue to grow and parliament has just passed the NHI bill. The World health Organisation recommends a doctor to patient ratio of 1:1000 and we can not run a successful NHI if we are below that number.

What the youth league is calling for:

Ministry intervention for lasting solutions for both doctors and dental professionals.
National treasury to reprioritize budgets for funding 1000 doctors.
Provincial governments to intervene, cut subsidies, and assist the National government with unemployment.
Private sector involvement in finding funding altematives.
Move placed students in rural hospitals with non-compliant facilities to better ones.
Medical Aid Schemes to assist in dealing with these issues.
Schedule a meeting with HSPCA representatives, including newly qualified and unemployed doctors.

The ANCYL will appoint a task team, led by the ANCYL health Sub-Cornmittee Chair, Dr Mike Ramothwala, to manage this as a focus group, demonstrating the YL's serious commitment for lasting solutions to lobby the Minister and the President.

In conclusion, the ANCYL will also urgently arrange a meeting between the Minister of Health Dr Joe Phaahla representatives of the unemployed doctors, the SAMA-TU trade unions so that we look into using the funds allocated by national treasury for NHI projects to be redirected to fund posts for the 1000 unemployed Doctors in our respective provinces especially in provinces that have the lowest patients to doctor ratio like Limpopo, Kwa Zulu Natal and the Eastern Cape.

Issued by ANCYL, 5 December 2024