“HPCSA stop gatekeeping,” cry foreign-trained young doctors

Foreign-trained young doctors say there’s a lack of political will to integrate them into the country’s strained healthcare system.

They took their fight to the Union Buildings yesterday, demanding their international qualifications be recognised by the local Health Professions Council.

They are accusing the council of gatekeeping and government of not being interested in their well-being.

The young doctors say they’ve been struggling to find work after numerous delays to the board exams that would see them recognised as doctors in the country.

As students demonstrated outside the HPCSA head offices, one female graduate told a HPCSA official that she could not even afford sanitary products or a tooth brush.

Another young doctor, Ndumiso Dlamini, spoke with YNews at the back of the demonstrations.

He say if government is not willing to integrate him, he’ll be forced to take his skills abroad.

Some political organisations have also lended their voices to the unemployed graduates’ plight.

ARISE South Africa President, Mpho Dagada, says the fight of these medics, is the fight of all young South Africans struggling under the weight of poor leadership.

Young people in the nation’s capital have also weighed-in.

They say qualified professionals being forced to take to the streets does not bode well for the rest of the country.

The foreign-trained doctors have given government two weeks to responds to their memorandum of demands.

Their demands include that all medical board exams be completed this year. Article by Naomi Kobbie