Mozambique: Hospitals running normally on doctors’ strike first day – minister

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Mozambique: Hospitals running normally on doctors’ strike first day – minister

8:34 CAT | 05 Dec 2022

FILE - For illustration purposes only. File photo: O País]

Mozambique’s minister of health said on Monday that all the country’s hospitals were operating “normally” on what was the first day of a national strike announced by doctors.

“The information we have, via telephone contact, is that across the country the National Health Service is operating normally,” said the minister, Armindo Tiago, during a visit to Matola Provincial Hospital in Maputo.

The minister, who had been visiting hospital units to assess their operations in light of the strike announced by the Mozambican Medical Association (AMM), noted that “one or other doctor” is absent in some provinces.

The AMM began a 21-day national strike on Monday, alleging that its demands regarding the implementation of the new Single Wage Table (TSU) have not been fulfilled.

At Maputo Central Hospital, the largest in Mozambique, Lusa found that everything appeared to be running normally for those arriving.

“Everything is working normally, they are attending in the same way as always,” said Dalina Américo, a patient who had returned to the hospital on Monday, one week after having a caesarean section.

Dalina returned to the maternity ward to remove the stitches and then to the laboratory, and said that in both places she was “well attended” and “there doesn’t seem to be a strike” at the hospital.

Another user of the hospital user, Lúcia Bernardo, who was on her way to make an appointment after leaving the gynaecological services, said that things appeared to going smoothly.

“There is no agitation and no huge queues,” she said. “Even in the laboratory I didn’t see anything abnormal.”

Activities inside the unit are apparently running normally in all departments, without queues, crowds or unrest.

Lusa contacted an official source at the Maputo Central Hospital, but did not get further clarification.

The president of the AMM, Milton Tatia, told Lusa that doctors have been asked to stay home, with “no concentration or march,” but did not provide information about the level of participation in the strike or the departments targeted.

In November, doctors postponed a planned strike after meetings with the ministers of economy and of health, in what they said was a move to “give the government time [to] implement the agreed principles.”

Of the 12 points discussed, agreements were reached on eight, but according to the union the government complied with “only three”.

The AMM cites the “constant change of interlocutors by the government” and a lack of transparency on “how doctors’ salaries are being processed or not” as among the points that have caused negotiations to falter so far.

The implementation of the TSU is being strongly contested by several professional classes, namely doctors, judges and teachers.

Source: Lusa