CUBA PROGRAMME
Aaron Motsoaledi is crippling SA’s ability to train enough doctors
Despite greater demand, the government has only slightly raised the number of trainee doctor from what it was in the 1970s
Is anyone surprised that the programme that trains South Africans as doctors in Cuba has been a catastrophic failure? Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi was quoted in Business Day as saying: "The Cuban government is not … coping with these numbers, the provinces in their budgeting systems did not factor it very well, and it is too much for the South African universities to absorb." (Big headache: Cuba-SA doctor training programme put on hold, April 23). For many years we have suggested that to tackle the chronic shortage of skilled doctors, rather than sending students off to a far-flung, despotic nation that has a completely different disease profile, the government should allow more skilled healthcare professionals from abroad to practise medicine in SA, increase the number of positions available at the government-run medical schools, and allow the private sector to train doctors. Everyone is well aware of our growing population, let alone the dramatically increased burden of diseas...
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