Health crisis intensifies

As the nationwide campaign for bus fare and basic allowances intensifies the ZHDA and ZINA leaderships has called for the government to act to avoid the continued loss of life and suffering by ordinary patients. It has been noted that by end of day yesterday more than 90 percent of nurses and 80 percent of doctors have heed the call by ZHDA and ZINA. It has also been noted that the cases of martenal and neonatal mortality have also been on the increase since the first of January. The government has embarked on a shameless propaganda campaign to deliberately misinform the public that normalcy has prevailed at the country's health institutions. The Sunday mail of 3 January 2016 in an act of desperation and violation of media ethics published a false article claiming that Mr Dongo the ZINA secretary general advising his members to go to work. The ZHDA and ZINA leaderships condemn this action by the Sunday mail and wholy dismiss the article as trivial, frivolous and vexatious. The state must instead solve the root causes of the problem than to deliberately misinform the public.

As we write this statement there are cases of nurses who have been evicted from their houses as a result of non payment of rentals. Some doctors have also been arrested for defaulting to pay maintenance as they have not been paid.  The ZHDA has also received reports of a doctor who almost committed suicide this morning due to financial challenges and is currently recuperating at a local private hospital.

The ZHDA and ZINA executive committees continue to call their members not to report for duty until they receive their salaries. We maintain that doctors and nurses deserve to leave in dignity and will not be swayed by the shameless propaganda being distributed by the Sunday mail. Should there be no action by the government the ZHDA and ZINA leaderships call upon the few remaining health workers who had remained in the hospital to down tools from Monday 4 January 2016. We maintain that there is nowhere in the world where health workers work for free. Every Zimbabwean has the right to be paid for the services they will have rendered and any attempts to coerce health workers to work for free is tantamount to reintroducing  slavery and this shall be ostensibly rejected.

No money , no free health workers.

Dr Fortune Nyamande( ZHDA president) and Mr E Dongo ( ZINA secretary general)