ActionSA can reveal that as of July 2024, vacancy rates for crucial positions like nurses, medical doctors, and senior management across South Africa have reached crisis levels with the Northern Cape seeing an astonishing 44% of critical senior management roles unfilled and the Free State grappling with a staggering 22% shortage of doctors.
Through ActionSA’s Parliamentary Question to the Minister of Health, we have uncovered that 18.5% of medical doctor positions in Mpumalanga, 28% of nursing positions in the Northern Cape, and a staggering 44% of senior management positions in the Northern Cape remain vacant.
As a consequence of the high vacancy rates, the quality of care is undoubtedly undermined, coupled with staff burnout, low retention rates, and a surge in medical malpractice lawsuits. The reality is that overworked and under-resourced hospitals are paying the price, with nearly R24 billion having been paid out in medical legal claims since 2020.
Indicative of a public healthcare system in decline, ActionSA believes that this crisis is further evidence of the Government’s continued failure to capacitate our public healthcare sector, where rampant corruption, ineffective management, inappropriate use of resources, and crumbling infrastructure remain ubiquitous features of our healthcare system, with seemingly no plan to overcome the weight of these challenges.
Furthermore, ActionSA is concerned that this revelation pertains only to funded posts and not the ‘needed’ posts in our public healthcare system that are unfunded. As such, the Government must urgently determine what is needed to maintain and expand access to quality healthcare versus what is currently funded. This exercise must be used to quantify the insufficiency of human resources across South Africa’s healthcare system, while also accounting for the burden placed on our healthcare system by the influx of foreign nationals.
ActionSA has long argued against the fact that while ordinary South Africans bear the brunt of a broken public healthcare system, Parliamentarians and the Executive enjoy private healthcare at the taxpayer’s expense, sparing them from the decaying public system they oversee.
ActionSA Uncovers Worrying Vacancy Crisis in Public Healthcare System
ActionSA can reveal that as of July 2024, vacancy rates for crucial positions like nurses, medical doctors, and senior management across South Africa have reached crisis levels with the Northern Cape seeing an astonishing 44% of critical senior management roles unfilled and the Free State grappling with a staggering 22% shortage of doctors.
Through ActionSA’s Parliamentary Question to the Minister of Health, we have uncovered that 18.5% of medical doctor positions in Mpumalanga, 28% of nursing positions in the Northern Cape, and a staggering 44% of senior management positions in the Northern Cape remain vacant.
As a consequence of the high vacancy rates, the quality of care is undoubtedly undermined, coupled with staff burnout, low retention rates, and a surge in medical malpractice lawsuits. The reality is that overworked and under-resourced hospitals are paying the price, with nearly R24 billion having been paid out in medical legal claims since 2020.
Indicative of a public healthcare system in decline, ActionSA believes that this crisis is further evidence of the Government’s continued failure to capacitate our public healthcare sector, where rampant corruption, ineffective management, inappropriate use of resources, and crumbling infrastructure remain ubiquitous features of our healthcare system, with seemingly no plan to overcome the weight of these challenges.
Furthermore, ActionSA is concerned that this revelation pertains only to funded posts and not the ‘needed’ posts in our public healthcare system that are unfunded. As such, the Government must urgently determine what is needed to maintain and expand access to quality healthcare versus what is currently funded. This exercise must be used to quantify the insufficiency of human resources across South Africa’s healthcare system, while also accounting for the burden placed on our healthcare system by the influx of foreign nationals.
ActionSA has long argued against the fact that while ordinary South Africans bear the brunt of a broken public healthcare system, Parliamentarians and the Executive enjoy private healthcare at the taxpayer’s expense, sparing them from the decaying public system they oversee.