Govt hospitals expected to be back normal as doctors return to work

OPERATIONS at Government hospitals are expected to be back to normal tomorrow following the end of the doctors' industrial action that lasted for more than a month.

The doctors on Saturday agreed to end the strike after Government acceded to their demands to review their allowances and provide critical resources at health centres.

Authorities at hospitals in Bulawayo yesterday said the end of the strike came as a relief as it has been a difficult month for them and patients.

United Bulawayo Hospitals (UBH) clinical director Dr Narcisius Dzvanga said the Zimbabwe Hospital Doctors' Association (ZHDA) wrote to them indicating that doctors around the country would now resume normal duties on Tuesday.

"The end of the strike has come as a relief to us because operations at the institution were almost coming to a grinding halt due to the absence of doctors. We're relying on information received from ZHDA. They wrote to us after the strike ended saying most doctors have travelled for the Easter Holidays and would definitely report for work on Tuesday," said Dr Dzvanga.

"We had also not made provisions for their return in terms of duty rosters for the doctors to be on duty because we were not sure if the strike had ended or it was continuing."

Mpilo Central Hospital clinical director Dr Solwayo Ngwenya also said they were expecting the situation to be back to normal at the institution tomorrow.

"We welcome the end of the strike but since the Easter Holiday is not yet over we expect the situation to be back to normal on Tuesday because most of the doctors have travelled. "As we've been doing for the past one month, we had left our contingency measures to cover until Tuesday," said Dr Ngwenya.

He said the hospital has been using skeletal staff to maintain critical areas like maternity, ICU, theatres, paediatric hospital and casualty to offer life saving care to patients.

According to the agreement between the Government and the doctors, on-call allowance rates for junior doctors has been reviewed from $5 per hour on the basis of a capped 72 hours working hours per month to $7,50 per hour on the basis of a maximum 106 working hours per month.

The on-call allowances will be paid on an unclaimable rate of $1 200 per month.

On-Call allowance sliding scale rate has also been reviewed from $216-$504 per month to $720-$1 680 per month.

Night duty allowances have been reviewed from a claimable sliding scale rate of between $65 and $91 per set of seven days to an unclaimable sliding scale rate of between $207 and $303 per month.

According to the agreement, the Government has also increased allowances for nurses.

Standby allowances for nurses based at rural health centres have been reviewed from claimable rate of $70 for a set of seven days to an unclaimable rate of $240 per set per month.

The maximum standby has been limited to a maximum of 14 days per month.

An allowance for nurse managers has also been introduced at a non-claimable rate of between $350 and $450 per month.

Medical allowances have also been reviewed from 15 percent to 20 percent of basic salary.

The Government also committed to correct grading anomalies in the health sector.

However, the Zimbabwe Nurses' Association said nurses would continue with their plans to down tools as they were not satisfied with what the Government was offering them.