Veterinarians are leaving South Africa in droves

A massive shortage of veterinarians in the country has left vacancies in clinics, especially in rural areas, and vets are leaving the country en masse.

About 100 veterinarians leave the country every year to work overseas, when only about 140 qualify annually, according to recent figures by the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development (DALRRD).

Paul van der Merwe, president of the South African Veterinary Association (SAVA), said the crisis is particularly felt in rural areas, where there is often a lack of equipment or medicines, and clinics frequently close down.

According to an answer given in Parliament by the Minister of Agriculture, there were 455 state veterinary positions in 2023. Of these, 129 (about 28%) were vacant. This compares to a 35% vacancy rate in 2019. (The numbers in the parliamentary answer should be treated with caution because some don’t add up.) The situation is most serious in Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal.

South Africa has just shy of 4,000 registered vets, of whom about 230 are specialists, which comes to just over 60 vets per million people. The international standard, according to the South African Veterinary Council, the body that regulates vets, is between 200 and 400 vets per million people.

Even if one counts every student vet and other people registered with the Council, the total is still just over 100 per million people, far short of the international standard.

A rural vet from KwaZulu-Natal, Tod Collins, who has been practicing for about 50 years, described being a rural vet as tough and very “physically demanding”, particularly because vets are mostly dealing with large animals which can be exhausting.

“And we are working in the elements; snow, rain, hail, dust, sun. That does take a lot out of us,” said Collins.

Collins said that being a vet often takes a toll on mental wellbeing, and depression, anxiety, and burnout are some of the reasons vets pull out of the profession.

Particularly referring to rural vets, Collins said that farmers and their families, come to “rely on us an awful amount”.

“When we come against a brick wall, or some strange conditions, or a series of circumstances lead us to fail, we take it personally,” said Collins.

Collins said that the “ruthlessness” of livestock farming, the danger of the work, the lack of facilities, compassion fatigue, and financial unpreparedness all take a toll on the mental health of many veterinary professionals.

“Vets generally become vets because they are sensitive people,” said Collins. He said that some vets within their first few years did not expect to have to put so many animals down.

Van der Merwe said that a survey SAVA did, in order to provide the Department of Home Affairs with statistics after the department removed veterinarians from the SA critical skills list, showed that it can take some practices up to two years to find someone to employ.

The gazetted critical skills list names 142 skills in demand in the country. Its aim is to attract foreign nationals and it makes the process of obtaining a work visa much shorter. The Department has since reinstated vets to the critical skills list.

On 23 July, Dipepeneneng Serage, deputy director-general of Agricultural Production, Biosecurity and Natural Resources Management in the Department of Agriculture, told Parliament that rural areas were under-resourced, lacked the facilities to support veterinary work, and rural vets were underpaid.

There are several reasons for the shortage of vets, according to van der Merwe. The first reason is remuneration; vets are often underpaid. He said that after finishing their studies, vets walk out of the University of Pretoria’s Faculty of Veterinary Science in Onderstepoort with massive debt and do not make enough to cover their expenses.

Van der Merwe said that there is talk about establishing a second faculty, as the faculty at Onderstepoort is the only veterinary faculty in the country, but this is a “long-term strategy” which will probably only take in its first student in ten or fifteen years.

After their final year, when vets do their compulsory community service, some end up in rural areas with basic facilities, with limited or no access to medicine or equipment. “The experience of veterinary service within the first year after they qualify is horrific …They think they will go out and deliver veterinary services, just to end up in a place where they cannot do it,” said van der Merwe.

He said that expectations from clients remain the same though the shortage of vets is getting worse.

“But one person cannot deliver the same service that five people used to deliver. With the shortage becoming bigger and bigger, we’re seeing more pressure on practices, and the more pressure on practices, the more people decide ‘that’s not for me anymore’ and emigrate,” said van der Merwe.

“It’s a vicious circle.”

Van der Merwe said that vets are a vital component in controlling disease outbreaks, such as the recent outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease and the avian flu outbreak last year, and are also crucial to food security.

The Department of Agriculture did not respond to GroundUp’s questions.