The Minister of Health, Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, on Friday called on the South African Nursing Council to stop recruiting health workers from other countries in Africa.
Tshabalala-Msimang made the call when she was addressing the first meeting of the second democratically elected South African Nursing Council in Pretoria.
She asked the council to support government efforts to stop the recruitment of health workers from other African countries into South Africa.
South Africa supported the adoption in May of a Code of Practice for International Recruitment of Health Workers at the meeting of Commonwealth health ministers in Geneva.
Tshabalala-Msimang said: ”We agreed that we would not recruit from other developing countries, particularly in Africa.
”It is our responsibility as part of Nepad [New Partnership for Africa’s Development] to ensure that South Africa, including the private health sector, does not actively recruit outside of a government-to-government agreement with a fellow African country.”
She said one of the strategies to stop this kind of recruitment was to create opportunities for nurses to get exposure within an agreed upon exchange programme.
South African Development Community (SADC) health ministers were pursuing this option, Tshabalala-Msimang said, adding that she hoped that she could count on the council’s support in this regard.
The code of practice specifies that cross-border recruitment of health workers should take into consideration the impact that such migration might have on a source country. Migration of health personnel is a major problem facing most of the countries in the SADC region. – Sapa