New doctors make a difference in rural areas

Despite mounting challenges in rural public health facilities, most newly graduated doctors are showing up for community-service work – and the majority of them believe they’re making a difference.

A report compiled from 2009 to 2014 on Community Service for Health Professionals and released in Joburg on Wednesday, showed that of the 1 200 doctors graduating, only 130 did not show up for community service.

According to the community service policy (CSP), health professionals are legally required to complete a year of community service, which entails remunerative work in the public sector typified by allocated placement when registering for the first time with their professional council.

If a health professional does not complete community service, they are restricted from practising.

About 6 500 newly qualified health professionals are undertaking a year of community service in public health facilities throughout the country.

Giving an overview of the report, Professor Steve Reid, from the University of Cape Town, said the number of community service doctors who were placed in rural areas in recent years hovered around 50 percent, which was a vast improvement on the 25 percent placed in 2001.

According to the report, however, the more populous provinces received more doctors, while the same trend wasn’t true for the more rural provinces. Doctors who weren’t satisfied with their allocation weren’t likely to turn up for their service, said Reid.

The allocation of doctors within their top five choices, he said, had increased from 77 percent in 2001 to 81 percent in 2014. The number of accredited facilities was also far less than the number of allocated professionals in Limpopo, Mpumalanga, North West, KwaZulu-Natal, the Northern Cape and the Free State, which suggested a lack of infrastructure in under-served areas, and potentially supervisory support, which remains a barrier to support isolated professionals.

In Gauteng, the opposite was true. There were more community service doctors available than the accredited facilities.