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Zimbabwe's Senior Doctors Join Strike, Further Crippling Health Care System

Columbus Mavhunga

   HARARE - Senior doctors in Zimbabwe have joined their junior
   counterparts in a general strike over low wages that they say are not
   keeping up with high inflation.

   On Wednesday, health care workers said they would continue their
   strike, which began Tuesday to protest the dismissal of junior
   colleagues who walked out in September, paralyzing the country's health
   delivery system.

   Zimbabwe's biggest hospital, Parirenyatwa General in Harare, looked
   deserted as patients were being turned away.

   Margret Mashava brought in her pregnant sister, Marvel, whoshe
   suspectedmighthave complications related to an earliercesarean section.

   "Now we are stranded. We do not know what to do. There are no nurses at
   the clinics. We do not know. Maybe we will approach midwives since
   there are no doctors now. We don't know what to do," she said.

   Zimbabwe's senior doctors on Wednesday said in a statement that they
   had watched "over the past few months as the situation in our hospitals
   deteriorate '¦ no bandages, no gloves and syringes available. In
   response, the employer [the government] unlawfully withheld their
   salaries. The authorities are so vindictive that they went to [a
   medical] theater to hand a letter to a doctor who was finishing an
   emergency operation. For the record, the senior doctors will not be
   reapplying to go back to work."

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