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THE strike by doctors at government hospitals entered its third week yesterday.
It started as a junior doctors’ industrial action, but has now spread, with middle level and senior practitioners joining, causing untold suffering to thousands of patients countrywide. The juniors want an increase in basic salaries from $282 per month to $1,200. They also want their on-call allowances to be increased and housing allowances from $250 to $350. Additionally, they want a special facility that permits them to import vehicles of their choice duty-free.
Middle level doctors joined in the collective job action a few days later.
A notice at United Bulawayo Hospitals reads:
“Considering the current strike by housemen, we (middle level doctors) have seen it fit for us as middle level doctors to withdraw our services with immediate effect. This is because the same issues affecting the striking doctors affect us even more and we are aggrieved by the lack of urgency by which it is being handled.”
It is a shame that the impact of the strike is most felt by the majority poor, those who lack money to seek medical attention at private hospitals and clinics where charges are often higher than at government facilities.
Many lives have been lost due to the action.
So far, we have two reported examples in Bulawayo.
Paul Mutete, 22, from Emakhandeni took an overdose on Saturday, angry that his parents had admonished him for bringing girlfriends home. He was taken to Mpilo Central Hospital, but because there was no doctor to help him, his parents took him back home untreated and in great pain. He later hanged himself. We are unsure whether he took his life in shame after being reprimanded or because he was in so much pain he found it most appropriate to escape from it the way he did.
On the same day, Bruce Mashoko, 17, was stabbed by a street gang in a dispute over a girl. His friends took him to Mpilo, but found no doctors.
They rushed him to Mater Dei Hospital, a more expensive church-owned health facility and Bulawayo’s best. Mashoko died shortly afterwards.
Maybe, their lives could have been saved if doctors were not on strike. Mashoko was as much a victim of street violence as of the doctors’ strike.
Mutete was as much a victim of his own shame as of the doctors’ strike.
These are the statistics that we know for Bulawayo on one day and involving only one hospital. There are obviously more in Harare, Mutare, Masvingo and elsewhere that are attributable to the industrial action and were preventable.
Yesterday, the doctors refused to return to work without a formal commitment from the government that their grievances would be addressed.
We want to urge doctors and government to agree on a way forward for the strike to end and human suffering to be alleviated.
We recognise that there can indeed be a challenge on their monetary demands, specifically what we see as a steep demand for a four-fold salary increase by the doctors. We describe the demand thus not because we are insensitive to our doctors’ plight but because everyone knows the parlous state of government finances at this time.
But we are confident that a deal will be struck. And that must be very soon. We don’t think doctors expressly want the figures stated. They will understand if a reasonable offer is put on the table, formally.
Turning to vehicles, we don’t see much of a challenge when it comes to the duty-free importation the doctors want. When the strike started, the Zimbabwe Hospital Doctors Association said some 400 of their members were protesting. This means that if the exemption is given, it would be only for the 400 or so medical practitioners, plus the middle level ones. Zimra will not be too unhappy about that. There, of course would be a “prejudice” in tax foregone, but doctors will not import cars daily.
We argue that, with clear guidelines to prevent abuse of the facility, the special window can be opened and serve a good purpose. Doctors can be allowed to import a car per year, or just two. None of them will thereafter approach Zimra with another application for exemption before 12 months elapse without having to answer uncomfortable questions.
Three weeks is too long for a strike by a critical sector such as the medical field. Many of our poor are suffering and losing their lives and their relatives grieve as a result. They demand doctors and their employer to end the strike so that they access health services which they are guaranteed under their constitution.
onlinemedia
derick.khumalo