Pay the doctors and save lives

The ongoing medical doctors’ strike is a serious indictment on the government, it is a clear sign of failure, cluelessness and lack of care. It is the role of the government of the day to provide social services to the citizens but sadly the government is failing to provide even the most basic of all.

Section 76(1) gives every Zimbabwean the right to basic health care services including reproductive health in contrast to what have been happening at state health institutions in the past two weeks and even beyond.

Patients are dying unattended at the country’s major hospitals, while the junior doctors are yet in yet another episode of downing their tools. The state of affairs at hospitals especially at the casualty section where patients especially ones involved in accidents who bleed, while their relatives are watching helplessly.

The responsible Ministers should deal with the concerns of the doctors to ensure they return to work with immediate effect.

In a country where the health sector is deteriorating.

While a recurrent cholera outbreak is spreading like the fires of the forges, we cannot afford a doctors strike.

Curbing the effects of the pandemic solely relies on an effective public health system that is able to identify and isolate patients as quickly as possible; the strike is simply placing the health system in a more compromised, precarious position which further endangers the citizens.

The continuous development of the national social crisis is reflective of the centre that is no longer holding with the ruling party concentrating on petty factional fights while the real issues of the day are left without leadership to attend.

The nation has lost many medical professionals to neighboring countries; the current strike may result in many medical practitioners following the exodus leaving our nation more exposed.

The current medical practitioners strike calls for immediate action, corrected priorities and a renewal of the whole social services delivery mechanisms.

We find the dramatising of the whole issue including Zanu PF’s spin having been called off to be cynical, contemptious and disrespectful.

Dr. Henry Madzorera
MDC National Secretary for Health