Doctors’ political powers unfairly diluted – new HPCSA President

Abstract

Teaching hospitals are national assets that must urgently be taken out of the hands of provincial governments and doctors must exit the central bargaining chamber where their negotiating power is reduced to that of ‘laborers and sweepers’. These are among the views of the newly appointed President of the Health Professions Council of South Africa, (HPCSA), Professor Sam Mokgokong, a groundbreaking local neurosurgeon and distinguished academic. Interviewed by Izindaba last month, Mokgokong, was unusually outspoken for an HPCSA President, displaying an independence rarely seen in his predecessor, Professor Nikky Padayachee, now the national Deputy Director General of Health. Mokgokong, best known internationally as a specialist and lead surgeon in separating craniopagus Siamese twins, was pressed on a number of issues that have historically angered doctors and distanced them from the HPCSA