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Who has a plug?

Another mass exodus of skilled workers has been awakened by the government’s plan to implement National Health Insurance (NHI).

As uncertainty surrounding the scheme’s practical implementation mounts, so, another brain drain looms.

Doctors are being tempted to leave by better offerings from countries like the UK and Canada, which are also facing severe skills shortages.

Last month, Canada identified close to 80 job types over five key sectors of the economy, with a primary focus on Healthcare and IT occupations, noted IOL:

“This is essentially the new ‘critical skills’ list that we have been waiting for the last two years,” said Nicholas Avramis, a South African-based Canadian immigration consultant.

A recent immigration report out of Canada revealed that hundreds of South African healthcare professionals and IT workers have entered Canada’s newly launched Express Entry pool for permanent residency. Avramis says his offices have already signed up over 150 healthcare and IT workers in the last two weeks. In addition to this, many healthcare professionals are getting a locum tenens assignment.

This surge in SA professionals applying for permanent residency is in response to the Canadian government’s new category-based selection criteria that will be administered through Canada’s flagship economic immigration programme, Express Entry.

Meanwhile, we are facing an alarming emigration rate of highly trained medical professionals, thanks in large part to a pervasive sense of distrust among our people towards our government.

Dr Mzukisi Grootboom, chairman of the South African Medical Association (Sama), admitted that doctors are anxious about the implementation and management of the NHI proposal:

“The reality is that all those South African doctors and nurses going to Canada and to the United Kingdom are going to countries that have their own kind of universal health coverage.

“So basically, there needs to be some reassurance on the part of the government about the ability to manage the local process. And it’s regrettable that nothing has been done, despite the fact that there have been some pilot sites for NHI, but we have not been told what the outcome is.

The crux of the matter, he said, is a trust deficit that exists between the population and doctors in this instance and the government:

“There’s a huge trust deficit, which the government needs to work on, because their track record is very unfortunate because the people of South Africa deserve better,” he said.

A Sama survey showed that up to 38% of its members plan to emigrate from South Africa due to the planned introduction of the NHI. You can just imagine how this will play out on the ground, affecting service delivery 10-fold. We’re talking longer waiting times, poorer patient outcomes, and an overstretched health system teetering on the brink of collapse.

The fact that South Africa already has a significantly lower doctor-to-patient ratio than the WHO-recommended threshold leaves much to be desired, and the gap is expected to widen with this exodus. Sadly, rural communities, which are already under-served, are likely to be the hardest hit.

While the brain drain is affecting the healthcare sector, the country is also losing skilled workers in other fields, such as engineering, IT, and finance, which has a negative impact on SA’s economy and its ability to compete globally.

The government needs to find a plug ASAP.

[source:iol]