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The Health Professions Council of South Africas (HPCSA) has struck off more than 1 300 medical practitioners in KwaZulu-Natal from its register.<\/p>\n
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More than 1 300 medical practitioners in KwaZulu-Natal have been struck off the Health Professions Council of South Africa\u2019s (HPCSA) register and are no longer permitted to practise. <\/p>\n
Among the professionals are 118 medical practitioners and six dentists. <\/p>\n
The council made the announcement yesterday after the practitioners failed to pay their annual fees by the April 1 deadline, despite its exhausting all avenues of communication, including letters, telephone calls, SMSes and notification via professional associations. <\/p>\n
Council spokeswoman Bertha Peters-Scheepers said yesterday that the Health Professions Act made it a criminal offence to practise when suspended or erased from the register. <\/p>\n
Nationally, almost 10 000 professionals were suspended, including 1 500 medical and dental practitioners, more than 6 500 emergency care practitioners and almost 600 psychologists. <\/p>\n
In KZN, 1 371 health professionals were suspended, including: <\/p>\n
* 118 medical practitioners; <\/p>\n
* 6 dentists; <\/p>\n
* 874 basic ambulance assistants; <\/p>\n
* 17 psychologists; <\/p>\n
* 20 radiographers; <\/p>\n
* 14 medical technologists; <\/p>\n
* 6 optometrists; <\/p>\n
* 10 occupational therapists <\/p>\n
* 28 environmental health practitioners. <\/p>\n
The annual registration fees range from R526 for basic ambulance assistants to R1 511 for psychologists. <\/p>\n
\u201cPractitioners are required to pay their annual fees on or before April 1 of every year. The money is used by the council to act on its mandate of protecting the public and guiding the professions,\u201d Peters-Scheepers said. <\/p>\n
\u201cIn order for the HPCSA to execute [this] mandate\u2026 only registered health-care practitioners may treat the public\u2026 It is a criminal offence to treat the public whilst not registered with the HPCSA.\u201d <\/p>\n
Suspended practitioners are able to have their names restored to the register after they make an application and pay a restoration fee, which increases up to five times the applicable amount, depending on how long the application is made after the erasure date. <\/p>\n
They will also be liable for their outstanding fees. <\/p>\n
As it is illegal to practise once deregistered, Peters-Scheepers said the council would take disciplinary action against those found to be defying the act. <\/p>\n
* Patients who want to check whether their practitioner is registered can visit the website http:\/\/iregister.hpcsa.co.za\/ or phone the council\u2019s contact centre at 012 3389 301. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Health Professions Council of South Africas (HPCSA) has struck off more than 1 300 medical practitioners in KwaZulu-Natal from its register. More than 1 300 medical practitioners in KwaZulu-Natal have been struck off the Health Professions Council of South Africa\u2019s (HPCSA) register and are no longer permitted to practise. Among the professionals are 118 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[8275,953,2143],"class_list":{"0":"post-16468","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-durban","8":"tag-newspaper","9":"tag-the-mercury","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16468\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}