Doctors and nurses return to work

Authorities in Zimbabwe expect most doctors and nurses to be back on duty in public hospitals by the end of the week. A public relations officer with the Ministry of Health told IRIN on Wednesday that "by yesterday 75 percent of nurses were back at work" and doctors were starting to return to their posts. This follows months of wrangling over a pay increase demanded by health workers, who have complained that runaway inflation has severely eroded their earnings. The crippling strike now seems to be over. Hospital Doctors Association president Dr Phibion Manyanga told Radio Zimbabwe that "doctors are returning to work, starting today [Wednesday] - but we are going in order to help our patients, not because of the offer that the government has put in front of us. What has been offered is all right, but that is not what we expected. But we cannot abandon people to continue suffering," he said. Manyanga added that doctors were going to give the government "two months to look into our grievances and address them - from our salaries to those things that we use in executing our duties, including medicines". Zimbabwe's doctors went on strike in October last year, demanding salaries of Zim $30 million a month (US $36,000 at the official rate and $6,000 at the black market rate) - a massive increase from their current Zim $4 million to Zim $5 million (US $6,000 to $1,000) a year. The doctors argue that such a hike was necessary to keep pace with inflation, now officially over 600 percent, in a country where the black market sets the real cost of living. "We hope that by the end of the week things will be back to normal," said the health ministry official.