Doctors jobless in pandemic
BREAKING POINT: BUDGET WOES MEAN BATTLE AGAINST COVID-19 OVERWHELMS HOSPITALS
Medical staff unable to find placements, despite staff shortages, high infection rates.
While Michelle Cerfontyne was completing her medical training last year, the Covid-19 pandemic overwhelmed South Africa’s understaffed public hospitals, so the young doctor thought she would get a job easily.
But when she started applying for posts in September, there seemed to be no vacancies.
Since then, a second wave of the coronavirus has far outstripped the first, hitting 20 000 daily cases earlier this month and bringing hospitals closer to breaking point.
Yet Cerfontyne’s 10 job applications have all been rejected. Nine did not give her an interview.
Cerfontyne is one of scores of newly qualified junior doctors and hundreds of other medical staff unable to find placements, despite staff shortages in a pandemic that has killed more than 40 000 people.
“I’m not used to sitting ... doing
nothing,” she said. “The fact that there’s a global pandemic and I’m just sitting at home doesn’t go hand in hand with the Hippocratic
oath that I took to always help people in need,” Cerfontyne added, referring to the pledge new doctors swear to uphold.
Nearly 200 doctors, 325 nurses and 200 other health workers are unemployed, according to Hire our Medical Heroes, a campaign pressuring the government to take on more South African medical staff to tackle the pandemic.
A department of health spokesperson did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Alex van den Heever, an expert in the administration of public health at University of the Witwatersrand, said budget constraints explain the anomaly. The government is trying to rein in its huge national wage bill, “so there will be an emphasis on freezing posts”, including medical ones.
Tshepile Tlali, interim chair of the Junior Doctors’ Association, said most unemployed doctors finished their community service but were not offered permanent jobs.
This includes Cerfontyne who, when she finished her training at a hospital in Mpumalanga, found they had no places to keep her on.
Throughout the pandemic, doctors, nurses, medics and their unions have complained of being understaffed and made to work long shifts. –