Zimbabwe: Doctors Go on Strike

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Financial Gazette (Harare)

22 August 2008
Posted to the web 28 August 2008

Harare

JUNIOR doctors have gone on strike countrywide to highlight their grievances over poor salaries and other working conditions, further worsening the situation at under-funded government hospitals.

The doctors embarked on the work boycott on Tuesday amid revelations that all the country's referral hospitals have long run out of drugs, including painkillers and other medicines.

As a result of the drug shortages, patients are required to buy their own medicines from private pharmacies where they are readily available at exorbitant prices. Patients are also required to buy drips for drop-by-drop intravenous administration of medication.

David Parirenyatwa, the Minister of Health and Child Welfare, could not immediately comment when approached by The Financial Gazette, saying he was in a meeting.

But striking junior doctors in Harare said the government should act urgently to improve their salaries and allowances, citing galloping inflation, which on Tuesday was officially estimated at 11,27 million percent.

Junior doctors earn a net salary of about $7 trillion ($700 revalued).

Amon Siveregi, the president of the Zimbabwe Medical Doctors Association, confirmed in a telephone interview with The Financial Gazette yesterday that junior doctors at government hospitals had gone on strike to press demands for higher salaries.

"We are demanding viable salaries," said Siveregi. "What we are getting right now is not enough. I can't go into details because I sit on a board that bars me from revealing doctors' salaries.

"We have informed the government about the strike and they are aware of our demands, which are not unreasonable."

Speaking only after being assured they would not be named, some doctors said while everyone knows health delivery was in a bad state due to chronic shortages of drugs and other essentials, all referral centres had now run out of even basic medicines.

"There is nothing, not even painkillers," said a junior doctor at Harare Hospital.

This was echoed by Siveregi, who said: "All referral hospitals in the country were affected.

"Not one doctor has been going to work since Tuesday and the situation will remain so until our grievances are addre-ssed."

In February this year, Parirenyatwa said his ministry had teamed up with the Global Fund to pay the salaries of 132 doctors, pharmacists and laboratory scientists in foreign currency.

In the run-up to the March harmonised elections, the government acquired 200 vehicles valued at US$4 million for senior health workers and doctors in a bid to improve working conditions and boost morale.

The health sector is among those hardest hit by the skills flight and the government has resorted to bonding newly qualified professionals to stem the exodus.

Zimbabwe trains an estimated 4 500 nurses and 149 doctors every year but three quarters of these find their way into the private sector or leave the country immediately upon the expiry of the mandatory bonding period.

Last year the Director of Preventive Services in the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare, told a parliamentary portfolio committee that the country only had 738 doctors instead of an establishment of 1 570.

Meanwhile, private doctors are now demanding consultation fees in foreign currency with some allegedly charging 200 rands per visit.

Most private surgeries are no longer accepting payment through medical aid schemes due to the tardiness of these institutions in settling claims.

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