South African Government Says Doctors’ Strike ‘Doing Harm’

Junior doctors and interns are demanding better pay and working conditions, and even threatening to shut down emergency rooms if their demands are not met. In a media briefing following a cabinet meeting, government spokesman Themba Maseko indicated that patients’ rights were being ignored, News24 said. Maseko told the briefing:

The labour dispute is doing considerable harm, adding more strain to an already strained public health sector, and in the process depriving ordinary South Africans access to desperately needed health care.

Wildcat strikes by young doctors and interns throughout the country have crippled hospitals and in some cases, military doctors have had to be called in while doctors were striking outside. By law, doctors are not allowed to strike in South Africa. Some provincial governments have fired striking doctors, but this has not stopped the strike actions. The strike has affected major hospitals all over the country, such as the Baragwanath Hospital in Johannesburg, South Africa’s largest, and the Groote Schuur hospital in Cape Town, where Professor Christiaan Barnard performed the world’s first heart transplant in 1967. Conditions in South Africa’s government hospitals are atrocious. It is not unusual for patients to stand in a queue for most of the day, only to be told to come back another day because their medicines have run out. Hospitals are not well maintained, patients often have to take their own blankets and nurses often behave in an inhumane manner. Doctors shoulder the burden, and with more leaving for greener pastures overseas or in the private sector, the day-to-day duties of doctors are undoubtedly getting harder by the day. However, the lives of patients are no easier. The Star newspaper described a scene where striking doctors carried a placard saying: “We are life savers, not slaves,” within sight of a pregnant woman who had been waiting all day to see a doctor. Despite the state threatening: “Drastic action,” if the doctors refuse to go back to work, the strike continues.