Council on Higher Education failing specialist doctors
28 April 2024
The DA is alarmed to learn that assurances given to us on 11 December 2023 that processes to address the quagmire surrounding the Master of Medicine (MMED) degree with the Walter Sisulu University (WSU), have amounted to nought.
On 7 December 2023, the DA revealed the South African Society of Anaesthesiologists (SASA) was still battling with on-going delays in the accreditation of the MMED degree specialisation in various disciplines including anaesthesia; ear, nose and throat (ENT); internal medicine; and ophthalmology. Many of these challenges had been on-going since 2012 and were having a profound effect on both struggling registrars and on healthcare delivery in the Eastern Cape.
The Council on Higher Education (CHE) had previously issued statements in 2022 assuring registrars in these and other disciplines that these specialisations were accredited and same would be ratified at ‘the next sitting of the Higher Education Quality Committee (HEQC) in February 2023’. This was not the case, and the meeting was deferred.
On 13 December 2023, the CHE made a commitment to urgently address the situation stating that ‘a decision on anaesthetics, cardio-thoracic surgery, neurosurgery, ophthalmology, ENT and urology would be made in February 2024’. Part of the commitment was that the discipline-specific WSU MMED programmes would be sent to the Minister of Health, Dr Joe Phaahla, for gazetting and the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) would retrospectively accredit the candidates.