OWN CORRESPONDENT, Lusaka | Wednesday 6.00pm.
THE Zambian government began emergency talks late on Wednesday with senior doctors who earlier issued an ultimatum to go on strike over the sacking of their junior counterparts, a health official said.
Elwyn Chomba, the executive director of the country’s largest University Teaching Hospital (UTH),said the meeting to avert the industrial action opened shortly before the expiry of an ultimatum issued to government at 4pm.
The Zambian authorities on Tuesday sacked all the country’s junior medical practitioners doctors who have been on strike for two weeks.
The move provoked senior doctors, whose association on Wednesday threatened that they would join the work stoppage if the government failed to reinstate their colleagues by 4.00pm. (1400 GMT).
Senior doctors, who have been attending to emergencies and critical cases at major government hospitals, also gave the government an ultimatum to begin procuring drugs, laboratory and surgical products which have been scarce at the public health institutions in the country by the afternoon.
“We sympathise with them. It is not easy to cope with crisis,” Chomba told AFP. She said government’s pre-occupation now is to find ways to contain the situation which she admitted is “bad”.
Military officers, nurses and clinical officers from the outskirts of the country, where the population is low, have been called in to rescue the patients at UTH.– AFP
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