How many doctors does South Africa have per person?

A health worker alone at an ultrasound machine in a Kenyan hospital, in black and white — One health worker, one machine, and a waiting room that never empties. Photo: Isaiah Maghanga, Wikimedia Commons.

The short answer: South Africa has about 1 doctor for every 1,270 people (2019). Across sub-Saharan Africa the gap is far wider. The region carries about 24% of the world's disease burden with about 3% of its health workers.

Every clinic queue, every overbooked theatre list and every doctor doing a second night on call comes back to one number: how many of them there are.

South Africa: 1 doctor for every 1,270 people

In 2019, South Africa had about 1 doctor for every 1,270 people. That is better than most of its neighbours, and still short of what its people need, especially in rural districts where posts sit empty for months.

Our calculation

In South Africa, there is about 1 doctor for every 1,270 people.

Spread evenly, that is a full school hall of patients for every doctor in the country, before counting how unevenly doctors are spread between the cities and rural areas.

Africa: a quarter of the illness, 3% of the health workers

Africa CDC has pointed out that sub-Saharan Africa carries about 24% of the global disease burden but has only about 3% of the world's health workers. The World Health Organization projects a shortfall of about 6.1 million health workers in its African Region by 2030.

Our calculation

Each health worker in the region carries about eight times their share of the world's illness.

Sub-Saharan Africa has about 24% of the world's disease and about 3% of its health workers. If the work were shared evenly around the world, each of them would be carrying about eight times as much as they do now.

In Nigeria, the resident doctors' association NARD has described a doctor-to-patient ratio of about 1 to 9,083, against the 1 to 600 figure it cites from the WHO. That is about 15 times as many patients per doctor.

Where the doctors go

Africa trains doctors, and then loses many of them. In 2019, the UK register listed about 8,241 doctors from Nigeria, 4,192 from Zimbabwe and 1,719 from South Africa. Each one is years of training that a home health system paid for and no longer has.

What actually helps

Give back the hours lost to paperwork. Every hour spent finding a folder, rewriting a history or chasing a result is an hour not spent with a patient.
Share the load across the team. Clear handovers and shared lists let nurses, doctors and admin staff each do the work only they can do.
Keep people from leaving. Safe hours and less pointless pressure keep doctors in the system they trained in.

How Kindredd helps

Kindredd cannot train more doctors. It can give the ones we have their time back.

In the Kindredd Care app, a health worker sees the patient's shared record, writes notes, referrals, scripts and sick notes on their phone, and works with their team on the same page. Teams get a shared roster and automated handover, so less time goes on paperwork and more goes on patients.

Get the Care app Kindredd for health workers

Questions people ask