The "crippling" doctors' strike cost government R5 million, Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi said on Tuesday.
The total cost to taxpayers was revealed in a written reply by Motsoaledi to a parliamentary question from Independent Democrats MP Haniff Hoosen.
Motsoaledi said the cost was the result of hundreds of doctors downing tools in May over wage demands, forcing the department of health to transfer 173 patients from public hospitals to private hospitals.
He told Independent Newspapers last night that apart from the financial cost of the doctors' month-long strike, the public had also suffered as hundreds of patients were turned away.
"Doctors have to understand they are part of essential services. The government and the public cannot afford similar strike action in the future. What has happened is abnormal. Whatever the circumstances this strike was an unfortunate instance. The money is not the biggest problem, the fact is patients could have died," Motsoaledi said.
He had told doctors' organisations in meetings around the country that it was important to work together to avoid a similar strike in the future.
"I have told them they shouldn't have gone to the extremes of striking because they are essential services and are bound by the constitution not to strike. The government and doctors cannot allow such a situation again," he said.
Cosatu president S'dumo Dlamini blamed the government for the cost of the strike, saying they had been warned.
"The government caused the strike. Delays in implementing a wage agreement from 2007 caused it," he said.