Cape Town - Junior doctors trained in Cuba and across South Africa are too expensive to absorb into the health system.

The Financial and Fiscal Commission briefed Parliament’s portfolio committee on health and said the cost of expenditure was likely to experience additional pressure arising from minimum wage agreement to community health workers and absorption of the current cohort of doctor interns from the Cuban medical programmes.

Member of the health portfolio committee Evelyn Wilson said: “We are sitting with a massive problem at the moment in our provinces where you have people from the top getting a massive chunk of the budget and then you end up having financial constraints and then you get to the bottom where the junior doctors are and you can’t offer them employment.”

The portfolio committee is urgently calling on the Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi to intervene.

Health consultant Dr Johann Serfontein said: “Doctors need to be employed by the state in order to qualify to register. You cannot work in SA if internships and community service is not done.”