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The Democratic Alliance (DA) will call for Parliament’s health portfolio committee to summon the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) to account for its practices and accountability mechanisms. This comes after it was revealed that a fake “neurosurgeon” was allowed to work in the country’s public hospitals for four years.

Ironically, while the HPCSA has let this charlatan practice here for so long, it has sat on the applications of numerous legitimate foreign doctors and internationally trained South African doctors and nurses who are ready to contribute their services.

South Africa faces a massive health practitioner shortage. The Adcorp Employment Index calculates that the country has just 0.7 physicians per 100 000 – less than Paraguay and Libya. It cites the HPCSA as a key obstacle to addressing this shortage.

Parliament’s health committee must establish whether the HPCSA has proper vetting systems that can quickly distinguish the quacks from the real doctors. We desperately need more doctors – but they must be legitimate.

We are also calling on the Minister of Health, Aaron Motsoaledi, to press criminal charges against the fake practitioner, Nyunyi Wambuyi Katumba.

Katumba obtained his qualifications from the HPCSA, whose staff appear to have assisted him with his fraud by accepting forged documentation and false statements. His actions violated the Health Professions Act and no less a person than the Minister of Health should bring that charge against him as an assurance to all South Africans that such practices will not be tolerated.

It defies belief that the HPCSA could allow such an error, especially after the imposter had already been fired in Botswana and Zimbabwe for similar cons.

If anyone can stroll into the HPCSA and gain recognition as a brain surgeon with a few forged certificates, then the Minister needs to investigate this organization to make sure that it is actually doing its job.

The HPCSA is supposed to protect the public from dangerous trickery of this kind. Instead it is apparent that staff members were actually complicit in the scam.

The HPCSA says that it will now conduct an audit of all foreign doctors who have registered here over the last ten years.

This is a good start, but we need to know that the HPSCA personnel are also ethical people interested in the welfare of South Africans in order to prevent problems of this nature in the future.