Patients suffer as doctors' strike continues

Patients at Tanzania's main referral hospital continued to be neglected on Tuesday as a strike by junior doctors and medical interns entered a sixth day, despite the government acting on their demand by almost doubling their salaries. Tanzania's chief secretary, Matern Lumbanga, told a news conference on Monday that the government had raised the monthly minimum salary for the doctors from 226,860 shillings to 403,120 shillings (1 US dollar = 1,180 Tanzania shillings) effective January 2006. He said the highest monthly pay for a doctor would be 1,14 million shillings, up from one million shillings. "We have tried our best to raise the salaries for doctors," he said. "There will also be some increment to other cadres in the medical field such as nurses, laboratory technicians, radiologists and pharmacists." However, some of the striking doctors dismissed the promised pay increment, maintaining that they wanted a minimum of 1.2 million shillings each per month. They said the amount being offered was below the 600,000 shillings a month that the Tanzania Medical Association recommended to the government in June. Medical interns and junior doctors at Muhimbili National Hospital began their strike on Thursday. They also wanted the government to improve their working conditions. The strike has adversely affected service delivery at the hospital. Some patients in the wards told IRIN on Tuesday that they were being subjected to psychological trauma because of the delay in removing dead bodies from the wards. "A dead body can remain in the ward for more than 10 hours without being moved to the mortuary," a patient said. On Sunday, patients in the maternity ward complained that no doctor had attended to them. They said they had only been examined by a few senior nurses. Bed occupancy at the 1,400-plus bed facility has declined as several patients have been directed to private hospitals while the authorities are reluctant to admit new patients as only overworked senior doctors and consultants are on duty. The chairman of the hospital's governing board, Abdulrahaman Kinana, said consultants and senior doctors were struggling to provide services to 822 patients who were, until Sunday afternoon, admitted at the hospital. The hospital's managing director, David Tregoning, directed on Tuesday all striking doctors to return to work by afternoon, warning that those who would continue to be absent should consider themselves fired. In a notice pasted on the hospital's notice boards, Tregoning said the doctors should appreciate the government's efforts to solve the their problems. He said the strike had severely affected service delivery at the country's major referral and university teaching hospital. However, he did not say how many deaths directly linked to the strike had occurred. "We should resume duty while negotiating other demands," he said. But by 15:00, the strike was still on. In June, the interns went on strike for a week and the government sacked them but immediately thereafter rescinded the decision after Prime Minister Frederick Sumaye visited the hospital and declared the crisis over, promising to deal with the problems the interns were facing. On 24 June, Sumaye said the government understood the plight of the interns but had been unable to improve their allowances because of the country's financial difficulties.