The situation at Zimbabwe’s main hospitals is now critical, reports said on Monday, as senior doctors joined juniors in a strike entering its third week.
Patients at Harare’s two main hospitals and hospitals in Bulawayo are being turned away without treatment, state radio said.
Only three doctors were on duty in casualty wards, it added.
Struggling junior doctors went on strike last month to press for a 100-fold monthly salary increase, up from Z$56 000 Zimbabwe ($224 United States at the official exchange rate, but only $22,40 at the widely used parallel rate) to Z$5-million dollars.
Health Minister David Parirenyatwa said last week that the junior or student doctors who, along with more than 100 Cuban doctors man almost all of Zimbabwe’s health institutions, were about to return to work, but that promise does not seem to have materialised.
Senior doctors also joined the strike on Sunday, reported the privately run Daily Mirror newspaper.
”Imagine a professional like me failing to make ends meet and having to resort to cross-border trading for survival,” one senior doctor at Harare Central Hospital told the paper. — Sapa