BAD news for our young doctors and other health practitioners. It seems that the government can prevent them from opening or even working in private practices wherever they choose.

President Jacob Zuma had slyly noted our preoccupation with this fuss about Lindiwe Mazibuko throwing in the towel as the DA's parliamentary leader to further her studies abroad and quietly signed into law sections of the National Health Act that now compel medical practitioners to apply to the Department of Health for "a certificate of need" should they wish to work in the suburb of their choice.

The certificate, according to news reports, will be compulsory from April 2016 and healthcare workers could face up to five years in prison or a fine if they run a private practice without it. 

The laws have, of course, raised the hackles of certain sections of the medical profession who see it as yet another example of a ham-fisted government bothering the citizenry. As Chris Archer, spokesman for the SA Private Practitioners' Forum, told The Times last week: "It's an experiment in social engineering. It is destined to fail. Doctors should be able to work and live where they choose."

Here at the Mahogany Ridge, however, we realise the act is intended to ensure an "equitable spread" of doctors and other practitioners around the country, and there is obviously a desperate need to provide services in areas where they were lacking.

There are probably not many private dental practices, for example, in Khayelitsha - but the southern suburbs are choked with them. The same goes for botox clinics. Our upmarket shopping malls are filled with frozen-faced women from enormous homes in the leafier areas. No such facilities exist where their domestic workers live. Surely the women of Nyanga and Masiphumelele would also want some of that Zille chiller glamour in their lives?

And while we're at it, how come the townships have got all the traditional healers and there are none, let's just say, in my neck of the woods? Why is it that when the previously advantaged classes have problems with their women and their love rivals and what have you, they don't have access to someone who could make them sneeze with a pinch of snuff or, in the case of emergencies, slaughter a goat in their lounge? Why is it that our best shot at mumbo jumbo is with rubbish Rod Suskin, the astrologer and sangoma who gives readings on his weekly radio show? (Shame on you, Cape Talk.)

There are those who would argue that traditional healers fall outside the scope of the Health Act's new laws on private practices. Which is the view that a reasonable person would hold. But we should also take the view that government is seldom reasonable and that its position on these wizards and magicians is that the charlatans are to be considered legitimate health practitioners. 

Remember the Traditional Health Practitioners Act? It was passed in 2005 so that "sick notes" from traditional healers would have the same validity, in terms of labour law, as those issued by medical doctors. Happily for employers the Constitutional Court ruled against this bogus nonsense. Alas for the rest of us we cannot be booked off work for three days because of the way the bones have rolled.

The Health Act's definition of health workers is certainly broad enough. It includes, among others, GPs, specialists, nurses, dieticians, physiotherapists, occupational therapists. It's estimated that there are about 70 000 who would all need certificates to open new private practices.

Which brings us to those health workers like the anonymous 28-year-old "African Nurse" with "high heels/stockings" whose services were advertised in the Adult Entertainment section of the classified notices in Friday's Cape Times. She and a great many of her occupational therapist colleagues who practice a sort of executive stress relief would no doubt also fall under the provisions of the Act. 

It is quite true that many of them do travel, and are thus able to provide services in areas where such services are lacking. As they probably are. But as most of this travel takes place between the hotels of the Atlantic seaboard, it could be argued that certificates of need would, uh, be of need here too.

It's going to take some doing, all that administrative hoo-hah, in issuing the certificates. It's only the spoilsports and haters who'd carp on about the health department's existing bureaucratic shortcomings and that the extra workload was sure to result in some sort of collapse. 

But so what? Professional help is at hand, just a phone call away.

This article first appeared in the Weekend Argus.

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