Joy for foreign-trained SA doctors
At least 109 foreign-trained South African doctors who have been sitting idly at home for years are finally preparing to sit for either the theory or practical components of the South African board examinations, paving their way to practise.
This week, the graduate doctors successfully lobbied the High Court in Pretoria to compel the department of health, as well as the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) to allow them to write the exams.
The department and the HPCSA were also interdicted and restrained from invoking the provisions of the new pathway policy guideline seemingly used to bar foreign-trained doctors from admission to practise.
According to the order, the health department and HPCSA are compelled to enrol the graduate doctors for the examinations scheduled to take place on Thursday and Friday.
Those who cannot be accommodated should be enrolled at the next evaluation to be scheduled by the health department and/or the HPCSA, after the theory evaluation scheduled for 28 September.
Advocate Rene Govender, for the nonprofit organisation – South African Internationally Trained Health Professionals Association – representing foreign-trained doctors in the matter, said the order was a milestone.
“We are hoping that the HPCSA will comply with this order since they decided not to oppose this action … and having made the application they had every opportunity to contest this case,” she said.
The health department and the HPCSA, both yet to respond to the order, were also jointly slapped with costs.
In January, The Citizen reported how the HPCSA had been accused of systemically snubbing at least 380 South African doctors trained abroad, rendering them unemployed, despite the country in desperately need of doctors.
Geremie Nayager, 26, of Durban in KwaZulu-Natal, who graduated as a medical doctor at China’s Anhui Medical College in 2019, after six years of study, said the order restored his hope.
“This court order is a big win for us. We are now finally being told that we can register properly and practise soon,” he said.