Mozambique: President calls on doctors, health workers to go back to work – Watch

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Mozambique: President calls on doctors, health workers to go back to work – Watch

5:03 CAT | 23 Aug 2023

Filipe Nyusi was speaking today during the launch of the National Culture Festival in Matola, on the outskirts of Maputo. [Screen grab: Focus TV]

Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi on Wednesday asked doctors and other health professionals on strike to “return to hospitals”, noting that the interruption of services leads to “suffering of the population”.

“Go back to the hospital, go back to the emergency room, to the laboratory, get behind the wheel of the ambulance and treat your, our fellow citizens”, asked the Mozambican head of state.

Filipe Nyusi was speaking today at the launch of the National Culture Festival in Matola, on the outskirts of Maputo.

The Mozambican National Health System is facing a crisis provoked by strikes by employees, first called by the Medical Association of Mozambique (AMM), against salary cuts and lack of payment for overtime, and later by the Association of United and Solidarity Health Professionals de Moçambique (APSUSM), which demands better working conditions for other professionals as well.

The Mozambican President asked that dialogue be maintained with a view to “quickly finding joint and feasible solutions to the country’s reality” and without harming either party.

“We would like to hear tomorrow that our brothers are working together with us”, stressed Nyusi, acknowledging that the demands of professionals , in addition to solving their own problems, are to “solve the problems of communities, when they talk about working conditions”.

Nyusi reiterated that patients “are suffering” and need health services, saying he has “faith and hope” that his message has reached health professionals.

READ: Mozambique: Doctors approve 21 more days of strike, ask for President’s intervention – Watch

Mozambican doctors approved on Sunday a new strike period of 21 days, the third consecutive one since July 10, directly appealing to the President, Filipe Nyusi, to end the current crisis that is paralyzing hospitals.

“We decided to extend the strike for another 21 days, in the manner in which we had been exercising previously, of course, with the provision of minimum services so that our population does not suffer anymore”, announced the president of the AMM, Milton Tatia, at the end of the assembly- general in Maputo.

Also on Sunday, Mozambican health workers – around 65,000 servants, technicians and nurses – began a 21-day general strike, maintaining only minimal services in maternity wards, nurseries and emergencies.

They demand from the Government that the claims of the sector be satisfied, including those of the medical class, as announced on Saturday by the president of APSUSM, nurse Anselmo Muchave.

Among the demands placed on the Government are “providing medication” to hospitals, which have to be purchased by patients, the acquisition of hospital beds, solving the “lack of food and adequate food” in health units, equipping ambulances with emergency for rapid life support, non-disposable personal protective equipment, whose lack of supply is “forcing workers to buy out of their own pocket”.

READ: Mozambique: PM leads working group to negotiate with striking doctors, health workers

Source: Lusa / Focus TV