BY KWANELE TSABEDZE
MBABANE – “As we appoint this 11, there is still a long queue of those who need to be hired.”
These were Minister of Health Lizzie Nkosi’s words when speaking about the hiring of doctors in the country. The minister made these remarks at a press conference announcing that the Ministry of Health has hired 11 doctors to permanently attend to patients in public health facilities.
“The hiring of General Practitioners is slow. We have just appointed 11, but as we appoint this 11, there is still a long queue of those who need to be hired. There are those who have completed their training, those who are waiting to do their internships, and then those who have completed their internships and need permanent work now,” said the minister.
The minister added that Government trains doctors for everyone – either the private sector or public health facilities can hire them. She also mentioned that all the candidates have to complete their internships.
She revealed some of specialisations that happen among doctors, citing that the most scarce doctors are superspecialists – doctors with accumulated skills such that they are able to attend to niche cases.
“We have quite a number of specialists, but we’re lacking, for example, someone who is an oncologist and also a pediatric oncologist on top of that – someone who focuses on child cancer treatment. The superspecialists are indeed very few, and they are also very scarce in the labour market in general ” added the minister.
Minister Nkosi committed that the Ministry will keep working on ensuring that there are enough doctors in the country’s health facilities.
