South African doctors underpaid, reveals SAMA report
A recent study by the South African Medical Association has shown that there has been no real increase in the salaries of doctors since 2015.
SAMA chairperson Dr Mvuyisi Mzukwa, revealed this during the pre-annual conference briefing on Wednesday.
The release of the report comes days after Health Minister Joe Phaahla said his department and Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana had found a solution to the issue of unemployed medical graduates in the country.
This follows the public outcry over doctors who have completed statutory community service programmes but remain unemployed.
Mzukwa said the government needs to invest more in South African doctors.
“Our doctors are underpaid. I heard people talking about these huge salaries that doctors are getting, and we are talking about the basic salary of a doctor. We are not talking about other things like overtime. Hence, we are saying to the government that if you want to retain these highly skilled professionals who are highly sought after by other countries, you need to invest in them in terms of attending to their conditions of work and also reimbursement.
“There’s a couple of hundred doctors who are unemployed, and you cannot come up with a system where there are dire shortages. As we know, at this point in time, the ratio in the public sector is 0.35 doctors per thousand citizens compared to the private sector of 1.75 doctors per thousand citizens. So, if you look at those disparities, we’ve been informed of babies put in cardboard boxes…so the system is not ready.
“If you don’t fix water in the municipalities and all these other things, you can’t expect to have a health system that is reformed. The government must be one system; each department must speak directly to what is happening in healthcare,” added Mzukwa.
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