Q&A with Sama's Dr Angelique Coetzee on arrival of Cuban doctors

Don't we have these skills?

We have all of them.

In sufficient numbers?

I'm quite sure in sufficient numbers. You have to understand some of them will be retired.

The department says it needed family physicians for door-to-door testing. Would retired doctors in their 60s be suitable?

None of these people are going to go from door to door physically and see patients, nor are the Cuban doctors. They are going to supervise their health-care workers going from door to door, and advise and assist them.

Are retired doctors prepared to come out of retirement?

Yes. There's a whole willingness out there from South African doctors. I'm working with them. I know the e-mails we're getting.

The minister says the Cubans have skills in community medicine, where SA is very weak?

Every GP who's been in private practice for 10 years knows what community medicine is. That's what we do.

Have you approached the department?

Yes. We've been busy for the past three weeks already engaging with the department, where we said: "Please, you are excluding us. Here we are, we would like to be involved." We're still in negotiations.

Were you unaware while negotiating that they'd already arranged for the Cuban doctors to come?

Yes. That's why we suspect that these negotiations with the Cuban government started six or seven weeks ago when our government decided that we will need these people here. So that [decision] is not based on what's happened in the past three weeks. It must have been made before the lockdown.

What is the significance of that?

I think they panicked. They looked at all the other figures, and the relationship between the two governments, and thought it's prudent to bring these doctors into the country, without first looking at what we have in our country. Because it's three weeks ago that we are now negotiating, and it came from the private sector.

The government didn't come to us and ask us would we like to be involved. We went to them and said: "We can see you are now excluding the private sector. We are willing, please let us work together."

How have they excluded the private sector?

By only focusing on hospitals in the public sector, not focusing on how the public and private sectors can work together.

They don't roll us out. If there's a problem, the first thing your department of health needs to do is go to your association and say: "We've got a problem here, do you have doctors that can help us?"

Instead of doing that you go out and look at other people. We had a webinar with the minister before the lockdown and said: "We want to work together." He gave us the name of an official but that moved too slowly.

Have your negotiations opened doors at all to private sector involvement?

Not really.

Why?

There's a lot of red tape.