The supernumerary registrar programme was created to give doctors from other African countries specialised training in South Africa in order to allow them to bring those skills home.
But during the Covid-19 pandemic, some of these foreign doctors have found themselves effectively stranded in South Africa, working the same gruelling shifts as local medics to treat Covid-19 without pay. Because they are technically registered as foreign students, they have no access to the benefits or salary of their local colleagues. But like them, they have been putting themselves at risk daily for close to a year to treat patients hit by the first and second wave of the pandemic.