Tunisian doctors are coming to South Africa to alleviate a local staff shortage, the Ministry of Health said on Friday.
KwaZulu-Natal, the Eastern Cape and Northern Cape and Mpumalanga are expected to benefit, said spokesperson Sibani Mngadi.
He said it was a short-term measure that would give the department time to train more staff and improve its ability to retain them.
Senior representatives of the Tunisian Agency for Technical Cooperation on Friday visited Prince Mshiyeni and Inkosi Albert Luthuli hospitals in KwaZulu-Natal. The delegation was led by agency’s deputy director general, Habib Ben Mansour.
The agency has a pool of more than 2 000 health professionals available to work in countries that have cooperation agreements with Tunisia.
South Africa and Tunisia signed a cooperation agreement on health in 1999. It was reaffirmed during Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang’s visit to Tunisia in 2004.
The Tunisian delegation and the Department of Health will sign a protocol on the recruitment of Tunisian doctors in Pretoria on Friday.
Between the 2000 and 2002, Tunisian ophthalmologists visited South Africa to perform eye operations, with 234 performed in 2000, 260 in 2001 and 176 in 2002.
The two countries have again revived the ophthalmologist programme and plan to sustain the programme for the next three years.
In January, 171 eye operations were performed by Tunisian ophthalmologists at Butterworth Hospital in the Eastern Cape. — Sapa