Strike cripples public health sector

up to 8,800 percent. They argue that their monthly salaries of Z$56,000 can barely cover basic expenses like rent and groceries, as inflation, currently running at 1,198 percent, continues to soar. The doctors are demanding a basic salary of Z$5 million plus other perks.
Tensions were raised this week when the Public Service Commission threatened to give orders to the law enforcement agents to arrest doctors who failed to turn up for work.
Health and Child Welfare minister David Parirenyatwa also ordered the doctors to return to work while their grievances were being looked into.
But the defiant doctors have refused to do so until they are assured that their demands have been met. While initially the strike was for junior doctors, senior doctors this week also downed their stethoscopes, citing poor remuneration.
“Ninety nine percent of doctors in this country are on strike and we are not going back to work until this issue is resolved,” Dr Kudakawashe Nyamutukwa, president of the Hospital Doctors’ Association, told The Zimbabwean on Tuesday. “The salaries we are getting are a joke and are not in tandem with the nobility and stature of this profession. How does anyone expect professionals such as doctors to live on $50,000 in this hyperinflationary environment? The Health Services Board is not serious about resolving this issue.”
Nyamutukwa confirmed that none of the striking doctors have been arrested as yet. But about 18 or so doctors have since resigned and are going out of the country in search of greener pastures.
In the meantime, the situation in hospitals was worsening. Only hospital emergency rooms, staffed largely by nurses and interns, were accepting patients with hundreds being turned away every day at Harare and Parirenyatwa Central Hospitals. The situation was reported to be equally dire in the second city of Bulawayo.
Redeployed military medical staffs have been seconded to the State hospitals and were dealing only with emergency cases. Defence Forces chief General Constantine Chiwenga was said to have demanded an audience with doctors’ representatives as the stand off intensified.
When a news crew from The Zimbabwean visited Parirenyatwa Hospital on Tuesday morning, hundreds of patients could be seen writhing in pain, with many packing the waiting rooms while others were on stretcher beds. Others were sleeping on the lawn outside the hospital, visibly in pain. Only two Cuban casual doctors and one doctor seconded from the army were on duty.
The strike has left hundreds of poor patients at the mercy of doctors in private practice, where consultation and medication is too expensive and far out of reach of many ordinary Zimbabweans.