DHET denies placing delays

THE Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) has denied that it placed a moratorium on the uptake of foreign-trained medical students for clinical training.

They said due to capacity constraints, they could not guarantee clinical training placement for foreign-trained students who chose to study medical-related degrees abroad.

A statement from the department said the Committee of Medical Deans – a joint body of medical deans from the country’s eight medical universities – has highlighted the difficulty in admitting foreign-trained students into their clinical training programmes until the issue of increasing the capacity to offer such programmes, is dealt with systemically.

“The Committee of Medical Deans has noted a sharp increase recently in the number of applications by returning foreign-trained medical graduates from countries such as China, Russia and Turkey who request to complete their clinical training programmes in South Africa. These are privately funded students who have not completed their full training in these countries, yet expect to be accommodated in South African institutions.

“The capacity of South African universities to enrol medical students is limited mainly by spaces available for the clinical training component of the programmes. This is constrained by training spaces within public hospitals. Therefore, foreign-trained students who demand spaces at our universities only for clinical training would find it difficult to be accommodated,” the statement said.

“Our medical schools are currently preparing to receive a large cohort of returning medical graduates from Cuba, as part of the agreement with the Cuban government to train medical doctors. These students will be returning from August next year and processes are being put in place to extend the clinical training platforms to accommodate them.

“The Medical Deans have agreed to only accept those students who have been trained abroad through a formal South African government agreement and where resources are available or made available to accommodate the students.”

The DHET said the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA), which moderates training and registration of all South African health professional students, has stringent criteria it uses to approve the number of students each university can place on the clinical training platform.

This is to maintain high quality clinical training in this country.