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Maputo — A Mozambique medical strike now in its third week has paralysed all but essential services at some of the country’s busiest hospitals, which are being forced to turn away desperate patients. “Every day I come and there are no doctors,” said gynaecology patient, Virginia Sitoe, who has been waiting since 24 May for test results to schedule a much-needed operation.
Yesterday was no different, and once again she is disappointed. “We are not scheduling consultations, we have no doctors,” the receptionist told her.
Looking around the usually bustling lobby of this Maputo hospital, most of the benches are empty.
Only the most desperate patients still bother to turn up hoping to see a doctor. The rest have got the message and stayed at home.
Sitoe is just one of the many Mozambicans who are feeling the impact of the ongoing pay dispute by doctors, nurses and other hospital staff.
“People are afraid to come. We have lost our value as a hospital. People are either dying at home or going to traditional healers,” said Mavelane Hospital’s director, Ussene Isse.
Isse has cancelled normal consultations and kept only essential trauma and maternity services running, as well as the dispensation of retrovirals for HIV sufferers.
In response the government instituted a tough no-work-no-pay policy against a strike it calls illegal.
The striking doctors, many of whom earn less than $600 a month, want their salaries doubled and were not impressed by a 15% raise they received following a strike in January. — Al Jazeera
Online Reporter