Rethinking Government Monopoly: Advocating for Private Medical Schools

Recent estimates have shown that as many as 2000 young South Africans are currently studying or have studied medicine abroad. The reasons for this trend are varied, including the quota system, which seeks to address historical injustices. Let's take the University of KwaZulu-Natal as an example. They received 12,000 applications for 250 available positions. This is not surprising, as medicine remains one of the most sought-after and competitive study programs worldwide. The breakdown below represents, more or less, the situation in all South African universities. Here is the admission breakdown:

·???????? Black African (69%)

·???????? Indian (19%)

·???????? Coloured(9%)

·???????? Whites (2%)

·???????? Other (1%)

I'll leave it to the experts to debate the relevance and value of this policy in this day and age, but I'll focus on the missed opportunity. Clearly, there's a significant number of talented young men and women who are willing and capable of studying medicine but are unable to do so due to quotas and the lack of capacity for universities to train more individuals. The only options available to them are to study abroad if they have wealthy parents or to abandon their dreams entirely. However, there's a third option that our government refuses to implement: Private Medical schools

?Private Medical Schools

Private education institutes have shown willingness to start medical schools. The recent one being Stadio. They have joined the Hospital Association of South Africa (HASA), which has shown a willingness to help train future doctors. This initiative would cost the government almost nothing while increasing the pool of available doctors. The Econex study they commissioned confirmed the viability of such schools. Our BRICS partners Brazil and India have excellent private institutions training doctors. To compound the issue, the government has been cutting subsidies for medical schools, further restricting their capacity. Given our population growth, creating one extra medical school every ten years is not sufficient. Allowing private institutions to provide training in collaboration with established universities will ensure that standards are maintained. By the way, Harvard University is a private institution! Then there’s the issue of foreign-trained doctors' inability to practice due to the lack of capacity for administering board exams. But that's a topic for another day!

?Why should government have monopoly on training doctors?

National health act

The government is not doing an excellent job in training, far from it. In fact, a recent study by Sipho Samuel Mtakati titled "Exploring the barriers to training and development of medical doctors in public health systems" found that provincial health departments lack the capacity to implement effective training.

Private medical schools are currently prohibited by the National Health Act; only public universities are allowed to train doctors. Interestingly, some argue that the National Health Act does not contain a specific section directly prohibiting private medical schools. It might be indirect, as this government is almost allergic to working with the private sector. They would rather shoot themselves in the foot. Clearly, we need private medical schools!

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