Source: Health crisis looms as nurses strike – DailyNews Live
Bridget Mananavire 26 May 2017
HARARE – Another crisis is looming at State hospitals, after fed up nurses
gave notice to the government that they would soon embark on a crippling
strike – as they press for improved working conditions and the dismissal
of the Health Services Board (HSB) secretariat, which they accuse of
failing to act on their grievances.
This comes as chaos continues to ravage public hospitals which have been
hit by shortages of drugs and key personnel, as well as new outbreaks of
communicable diseases such as cholera, malaria and typhoid.
“We feel the HSB does not understand us and how we operate. We have been
raising our grievances since 2010 and up to now, 11 years later, they have
not yet addressed those issues.
“The purpose of the HSB is to address the conditions of service for health
workers, but this is not happening,” Zimbabwe Nurses Association secretary
general, Enock Dongo, told the Daily News yesterday.
He said all nurses, regardless of qualifications and experience, were
being classified under the lowest grade.
“Even when you have been working as a nurse for 10 years, and when you
should be considered to be a senior, you get the lowest salary of about
$285. It’s all because your grade doesn’t change. You remain grade D1,
instead of maybe D3.
“Someone can also have three or four diplomas on top of a nursing degree
and still be in that low grade. We have specialities in midwifery,
intensive care and physiotherapy, but all that is not being recognised.
“We want the HSB secretariat to be removed … and we will not stop
demonstrating until they are removed. They are non-medical people and they
don’t even know how we operate as health workers,” Dongo said.
“When we discuss our issues with the board, they appear to understand, but
the problem comes with implementation … that’s where the problem is. We
cannot have the lives and professions of over 35 000 people in disarray
because of a few people, and we are saying we are fed up,” he added.
Public hospitals are struggling under the weight of a myriad other
problems, including the shortage of drugs and continued under-funding by
the government.
Despite the humongous problems bedevilling the public health sector, the
misfiring Zanu PF government has continued to overlook its urgent needs,
as demonstrated by the allocation of a measly budget to hospitals this
year.
In his budget presentation in December, Finance minister Patrick Chinamasa
reduced the vote for health from $331 million to a disappointing $282
million – a figure that falls way short of meeting the big demands of the
public health sector.
This has seen Zimbabwe’s public health sector lurching from one crisis to
the other over the past two decades, as the country’s stone-broke
government struggles to pay workers and stock hospitals.
Early this year, health services across the country were crippled when
doctors and nurses staged a national strike, pressing for improved working
conditions.
In 2016, major referral hospitals also had to suspend many services as a
result of the shortage of drugs, including painkillers – exposing how much
things have fallen apart in the country since the early 2000s.
United Bulawayo Hospitals (UBH) and Harare Central Hospital were among the
major health facilities that had to suspend normal services as a result of
drug shortages, including pethidine – a synthetic compound used as a
painkiller, especially for women in labour and during caesarean
operations.
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