From July this year, the South African government’s Department of Health will provide financial incentives to various professional categories in the country for the recruitment and retention of scarce skills in the public health sector.
This decision came out of last week’s meeting between national Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang and the nine provincial health ministers in Johannesburg, government news agency BuaNews reported on Monday. The financial incentives would come out of the R500-million set aside by finance minister Trevor Manuel in his budget speech in February, to attract health workers to rural and other inhospitable areas in the country.
A statement issued after the meeting said these financial incentives would be incrementally spread among the various professional categories due to the scarcity of resources.
The meeting also urged medical schools to adjust their learning programmes in line with the newly approved duration for medical training in the country. The Ministers also approved five years of medical training, followed by two years of internship and one year of community service, while students currently doing a six-year medical course would do a one-year internship until 2006.
From 2007, all students will move to a two-year internship and one-year community service programme. The ministers will be meeting with the deans of medical schools to discuss the matter and other issues of mutual interest.
The meeting also noted the progress being made in formulating a nutrition strategy for the health sector. This includes the strengthening of the Nutritional Guidelines for People Living with AIDS, TB and other debilitating conditions in line with the manual on nutrition developed by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). The Protein Energy and Malnutrition programme, which currently provides nutritional support to children under the age of five, will be evaluated in line with government’s broader food security and nutrition initiative.
The ministerial grouping also supported the joint initiative of the Health Department and Medical Research Council (MRC) to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of traditional medicine and herbal remedies.
Launched in March, the MRC is conducting tests and evaluating such medicines in the research programme. It expects to then develop the substances to be used in chronic conditions — including immune boosters and to provide information on these medicines for the general public.
For this reason, the health department said it was intensifying its activities in this field in the run up to the African Traditional Medicine Day on 31 August.
The Traditional Healers Bill published for public comment last month is one
of the Department’s efforts to formalise this field of practice. – I-Net Bridge