February 26, 2024

Medical professionals in South Africa earn up to 40 times the salaries of their counterparts in Kenya and Nigeria

Unemployed doctors arent the only challenge facing the health department; those working in state clinics and hospitals are severely underpaid, according to the South African Medical Association (Sama).
Despite this, South African government doctors earn up to three times more in a month than their counterparts in other middle-income African countries such as Kenya and Nigeria. Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana recently allocated just over R15 billion to the health department to address its staffing crisis and create positions for nearly 700 unemployed doctors who have recently graduated from universities.
However, while the government is attempting to address unemployment among doctors, Sama highlights that public sector doctors in South Africa are still not adequately compensated. According to Mzulungile Nodikida, CEO of Sama, a study commissioned by the association revealed that employed doctors in provincial health departments are earning salaries equivalent to those from 2015.
For instance, in Kenya, medical interns earned around Ksh122,000 to Ksh145,000 per month in 2013, compared to nearly R28,000 a month for South African medical interns during the same period. Similarly, entry-level medical officers in Kenya earned Ksh250,000 per month in 2013, while their counterparts in South Africa earned almost R62,000 monthly. In Nigeria, entry-level doctors earn roughly NN1.8 million (about R22,000) per year, whereas South African medical officers earn more than three times that amount monthly.
Despite these disparities, the health department has yet to address Sama's concerns about doctors' salaries. Additionally, increases in salaries have not kept pace with inflation and cost-of-living pressures, leading to significant income erosion for doctors. Moreover, long working hours and safety concerns further deter doctors from working in the public sector, contributing to burnout and negatively impacting patient care.
In response to recent budget announcements, Sama hopes that sufficient funds will be allocated to address the shortage of doctors in hospitals and improve the plight of medical practitioners whose salaries have been eroded by inflation over the years.


At Siteman, physicians, researchers, and patients remain actively engaged in ongoing clinical trials exploring TIL therapy's efficacy for advanced lung and cervical cancers. Developed by Iovance Therapeutics, the newly approved TIL therapy is named lifileucel (trade name Amtagvi).

TIL therapy utilizes a patient's own T cells, which have homed in on and infiltrated the tumor in an effort to combat the cancer. However, these innate cancer-fighting immune cells require support, as they are scarce and swiftly overwhelmed by tumors.

"This represents truly personalized cancer therapy, as the T cells are derived from the patient's own tumor," remarked surgical oncologist Ryan C. Fields, MD. "These T cells are already programmed in multiple ways to target the specific cancer cells. Moreover, since the T cells are the patient's own, there's no risk of immune cells attacking healthy tissues�a perilous scenario known as graft-versus-host disease, which can occur with stem cell transplantation for blood cancers."

The Cutaneous Oncology Program, housed within Washington University's Division of Oncology and co-led by Ansstas, Fields, and Lynn A. Cornelius, MD, will oversee TIL therapy administration for eligible melanoma patients.

For this therapy, physicians at an authorized treatment center extract a tumor sample and send it to an Iovance manufacturing facility. Here, tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes are isolated from the tumor, expanded outside the body, and cryopreserved. The resulting TIL therapy cell product is then shipped back to the patient. Upon intravenous infusion, these tumor-specific T cells, now numbering in the billions, exhibit enhanced efficacy in targeting tumor cells throughout the body. Patients undergo chemotherapy to prepare their bodies for T cell infusion, alongside interleukin-2 treatment to bolster T cell activity.

According to findings from a clinical trial published in The Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer, approximately 30% of patients witnessed at least a 30% reduction in tumor size. Furthermore, around half of patients experiencing tumor response to the therapy achieved a remission lasting at least 12 months post-single TIL treatment.

The treatment regimen involves chemotherapy to eliminate existing T cells and create room for the new T cells to thrive, stimulating an intensified immune response. This process may trigger various side effects, including heightened infection risk, internal bleeding, cardiac arrhythmias, respiratory and kidney failure, and allergic reactions. While many side effects are manageable, some may pose severe, life-threatening risks. Consequently, the initial rollout of TIL therapy is occurring at centers with substantial experience in treating patients with cell-based immunotherapies, such as CAR-T cell therapy for blood cancers.