DENOSA shocked by NHC's allocation of new nursing positions at public facilities

CAPE TOWN - The Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa (DENOSA) said it's shocked by the National Health Council's inadequate allocation for new nursing positions at public facilities.

Only 200 posts have been approved for 2025, but the union said that more nurses were needed to meet the gap in the sector.

DENOSA general secretary, Kwena Manamela, said the council's latest recruitment drive would not meet the demands of the industry.

"I think COVID exposed a number of things that the health department was not aware of. In terms of pandemics, we were not completely ready for that. So immediately after that, then we need to recover, but we haven’t recovered from that because remember COVID took some of our colleagues, they passed on, but the government was not able to replace those that have left. So, the shortage is even getting worse."

Manamela said they wanted to know what method was used for the new recruitments.

"Now it's the second one that they are making within a year, so we are not happy about the formula that they’ve used to come up with what they did. We are aware that we’ve got a shortage of doctors, we are aware that we’ve got a shortage of other professionals, we are aware of the shortage of nurses, but what formula did they use?"