Pangolins at the Johannesburg Wildlife Veterinary Hospital NPC which specialises in the treatment and rehabilitation of indigenous wildlife
A survey by the South African Veterinary Association (Sava) has found that a fifth of the vets aged 25 to 29 polled were emigrating because of economic and safety concerns, leaving the country with insufficient services.
The organisation raised concerns about the removal of vets from the Department of Home Affairs’s scarce skills list, saying that it was never consulted, despite representing more than half the vets in the country.
Sava’s managing director, Gert Steyn, said the profession was stunned when the department took vets off the critical skills list in February last year.
“[Since then] we have been in constant engagement with the relevant authorities and will report any progress made in regard to this,” he said.
The Sava survey says that, while the services that vets provide are key to food safety and security, “the veterinary community is not growing at a pace that is required for our developmental economy”.
Western Cape head of agriculture Ivan Meyer also raised concern about the country not producing enough vets. He said the international norm was between 200 and 400 vets per million of the population but in South Africa there are only about 60 to 70 per million.
“This represents about 25% of our country’s needs, so this is a crisis,” Meyer said, adding that the shortage had been made worse by the home affairs department removing vets from the critical skills list, making it harder for international professionals to acquire a work visa.
Meyer said urgent interventions were required to stop and reverse the trend of South Africa’s young vets emigrating, including better employment and remuneration conditions.
“Improving young veterinarians’ working environment and career prospects will improve the retention of a critical skill required within the agricultural economy,” he said.
The National Council of Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals’ spokesperson Keshvi Nair said SPCAs around the country were struggling to employ vets and veterinary nurses due to the shortage of people with this training.
He added that the SPCA could not compete with the salary packages offered in other countries.
“As a result, many SPCAs now have to pay private veterinarians to assist with medical treatment for animals under the care of the SPCA. This obviously comes at a great expense to the SPCAs that are already struggling to keep their heads above water,” Nair said.
The University of Pretoria is the only institution in South Africa which offers a Bachelor of Veterinary Science degree (BVSc) and Meyer said the country needed a second centre.
“Our reliance on a single veterinary faculty to train our veterinarians is a considerable risk,” Meyer said. “A second veterinary faculty must be commissioned to train more veterinarians.”
He added that the coastal provinces — Western Cape, Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal — were ideal sites for a second veterinary faculty, noting: “These provinces carry more than half of the country’s animal population that could be better serviced and benefit from the research platform created by the new faculty.”
Such an initiative, he said, would boost vet work in the aquaculture and marine sectors.
“Our veterinary service promotes healthy animals; sustainable and profitable animal production enterprises; safe trade in animals and products of animal origin and the well-being of animals and the public,” Meyer added.
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