Maputo, 15 Jul (AIM) – The chairperson of the Medical Association of Mozambique (AMM), Napoleao Viola, has warned that the country’s doctors might go back on strike, because the government has supposedly not complied with promises made last year, at the time of the previous doctors’ strike.
Cited in Monday’s issue of the independent daily “O Pais”, Viola said the unmet promises concerned “questions of remuneration” and “improvements in working conditions”.
Of the AMM’s demands, he said, only the most basic have been met, such as paying off wage arrears. It is now 11 months since the last agreement between the AMM and the government, but the government has only delivered on “25 per cent of what was agreed”.
Viola said the agreement ending the strike included “improving working conditions in the National Health Service, but that did not happen”.
A further problem that could lead to a new strike, he added, was lack of openness on the part of the government. “From late February up until now”, said Viola, “the government has not been open to dialogue”.
Doctors had met to analyse the state of the dialogue between the government and the AMM, and concluded that “there is no dialogue at all”.
“Unfortunately for all of us”, he said, “the only path available for doctors is to take a position which we would all like to avoid”.
Viola did not say when this strike might begin, or what measures could be taken to avoid it.
Meanwhile, major hospitals particularly in the northern province of Nampula have run out of plaster and are resorting to pieces of cardboard to treat patients with fractures.
According to “O Pais”, the Ministry of Health has recognised this crisis and blames the company that won the contract to supply plaster. The company has allegedly abandoned its contractual responsibilities.
The shortage seems only to affect public hospitals, since patients have been advised to buy plaster in private phamacies.
For the past month, doctors in Nampula central hospital have been using cardboard instead of plaster. Doctors worry that this improvisation means that bones will not heal properly.
Health Minister Armindo Tiago told reporters in Nampula last Thursday that “acquisitions in the health sector obey a cycle that covers an entire year. In 2021 we launched a tender for the supply of plaster for 2022 and the first quarter of 2023. But the winner of the tender dropped out in the middle of the year. So we had to turn to the runner-up to supply plaster for 2023 and the first quarter of 2024.
Tiago declined to name the company that had dropped out “on ethical grounds”.
But the Minister promised that, as from this Monday, “we shall have the situation normalized through the use of emergency mechanisms. But emergency mechanisms take between four and six months to be activated”.
(AIM)
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