/ 16 May 1997

Interns receive call-up alert

Letters warning of two years’ medical `vocational training’ have gone out, report Jim Day and Mungo Soggott

HEALTH authorities have told medical interns to expect call-up papers, riding roughshod over the parliamentary health committee’s rejection of the scheme.

This week students across the country received letters from the South African Medical and Dental Council telling them to expect call-up papers for two years of “vocational training” starting next January.

The scheme has not yet been approved by the parliamentary health committee, which last September sent Health Minister Nkosazana Zuma back to the drawing board on the proposal.

The Democratic Party’s member of the parliamentary committee, Mike Ellis, said the proposal had yet not been vetted by the health committee.

“They certainly have jumped the gun,” he said. “It’s absolutely appalling. It shows complete disrespect for the entire legislative process. It is absolutely unacceptable.”

Ellis said he believed that some interns could take legal action against the Health Department.

He said the proposal was part of an amending Bill currently being thrashed out and the medical and dental council was still weighing up the proposal. He said it was crucial that interns were not forced into it, but should instead be given an incentive to participate.

Zuma’s proposal means that medical students who have completed their training and are poised to qualify will have to freeze their plans for two more years before they can be registered as doctors. The proposal will dramatically slow the medical brain drain from South Africa to countries such as Canada, New Zealand and Britain.

Interns canvassed on Thursday said they vigorously opposed the scheme, which would stymie their efforts to enter their fields of interest. It is understood that interns at some hospitals have banded together and told the department they will refuse to comply.

The interns argue that although the scheme is dressed up as “vocational training” it is essentially community service.

“They are saying that we are not adequately trained. That is rubbish as overseas [hospitals] accept us,” said one intern at a KwaZulu-Natal hospital.

The Director General of the Health Department, Dr Olive Shisana, confirmed this week she was expecting students to report for duty in January. Shisana said the programme would inject about 1 000 more doctors into the public sector and in many instances they would be working in some of the most underserved regions of the country.

“It will be a benefit for both the medical doctors and for the patients,” she said.

Shisana said she did not understand why medical students were so vehemently opposed to the proposal, as they would receive full salaries as public medical officers while receiving further training and would be gaining valuable experience. She said the young doctors would serve their two years in certified hospitals and clinics.

Last September, the ANC-dominated parliamentary health committee rejected Zuma’s proposal that doctors serve two years’ community service, saying the minister had to conduct further research before it could give her the green light. The chairman of the committee, Abe Nkomo, said the medical and dental council had been asked to investigate the proposal and report back to the committee.

The dean of the medical faculty at Stellenbosch University, Professor J Lochner, said the programme was being forced on his students.

The registrar of the medical and dental council, Nico Prinsloo, said the council had been at pains to say that the scheme was not community service but in fact vocational training. He said the council, which is still discussing the fine print with medical faculties, was drawing up a list of suitable hospitals.

Doctors’ unions – the South African Medical Association and the South African Junior Doctors Association – have vigorously opposed the move. The junior doctors’ association said early last month it would do its utmost to prevent the introduction of the further training.