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Australia puts curbs on foreign doctors

The minister for health, Dr Michael Wooldridge, has banned doctors who have just arrived in Australia from entering general practice for at least 10 years in an attempt to cut the oversupply of general practitioners in urban areas. The plan means that the doctors, including those from New Zealand and full fee paying foreign medical students, will not be given access to the government's Medicare system.

The move is expected to reduce the number of doctors entering Australia from 600 to 100 a year. The countries most affected will be India, Fiji, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Ireland, and Lebanon.

"We have been mugs to allow ourselves to be one of the last Western countries to allow unrestricted medical migration," said Dr Wooldridge, claiming that it was "killing Medicare" by pushing up costs. But he said that foreign doctors would still be able to work in salaried positions in public hospitals if they passed the Australian Medical Council examinations.

The minister said that New Zealand seems to have been used as a staging post by some doctors to get into Australia. He also claimed that he was "suspicious" about some of the 350 doctors who were granted entry after marrying Australians.

Dr Wooldridge said that Australia already had 4500 general practitioners too many in the large cities. But there was also an undersupply of 500 doctors in rural areas caused by a reluctance of many general practitioners to go into the outback.

The Australian Medical Association has backed the ban but said that the training system still had problems. "In the long term it will have a substantial effect ... but the numbers of graduates has to be matched with the training places," warned the president of the association, Dr Keith Woolard.

The Australian Doctors Trained Overseas Association said that the problem was caused not by oversupply but by a poor distribution of the doctors' services. "But the government and the finance department wants to create an atmosphere of fear and a sense that the system is in crisis," it said.--CHRISTOPHER ZINN, Australian correspondent, Guardian

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