Posted on 07/18/2006 9:30:03 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
HARARE, Zimbabwe - Nearly 300 striking doctors in Zimbabwe ignored government demands Tuesday for them to return to hospital wards, officials said.
The strike has deepened a crisis in Zimbabwe's health system which has seen qualified staff fleeing the country in droves for jobs that pay up to six times more abroad. A young doctor here earns only about $564 a month.
The junior doctors walked out Thursday after authorities extended their seven-year attachment to state hospitals by another year, to be spent working at rural facilities.
State-run radio reported a "critical" situation at government hospitals Tuesday, with only the most urgent cases being treated by a handful of senior staff and nurses on duty. It took three hours for victims of a road accident Monday to get attention, according to reporters of The Daily Mirror, a pro-government newspaper.
The strike is just the latest problem Zimbabweans face. The country's economy has been in free-fall since February 2000 when the government began seizing thousands of white-owned commercial farms for redistribution to blacks, crippling the key agriculture sector. As the economy has plummeted, government services have declined, with hospitals running notoriously short of medicines, linen, food and even mortuary space.
The government introduced the requirement that junior doctors serve in state-run facilities in a bid to stem the exodus abroad. It has also promised furniture and housing allowances for those who work in rural facilities, but has balked at demands for a major pay review and help buying four-wheel drive vehicles to navigate Zimbabwe's notoriously rutted and potholed highways.
Doctors, who are considered essential service providers, can be sentenced up to five years in prison for going on strike, but no arrests have been made so far.
The further fruits of Mugabe's tertiary syphillis ...
I HOPE it's tertiary!
As the economy has plummeted, government services have declined, with hospitals running notoriously short of medicines, linen, food and even mortuary space.It must be those Bush tax cuts.
-ccm
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