Health and Child Care Minister Dr Obadiah Moyo has been meeting senior doctors and consultants in the capital Harare with a view to mapping the way forward following the doctors’ strike.
In a strike notice to hospital authorities, the doctors wrote:
As the consultants of Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals, we have decided to rationalise the use of the limited and very finite resources that are currently available.
We are now forced with immediate effect to further scale down the services which we are offering, to deal with dire emergencies only until the situation normalises.
… the situation with regards to medical consumables and equipment is now even worse than it was in December 2018. This has continued to cause a severe compromise in the safety and working conditions of staff and a reduced capacity to deliver services to patients.
We feel that these compounding factors have compromised patient care, putting patients’ health and lives at risk at the very institution which is supposed to restore health and life.
We have tried to make adjustments to no avail. Statistics show that for January and February this year, we have operated less than 20 per cent of the elective cases that we were doing in the same period in 2018. For emergencies, the time taken before the patient goes to the theatre is now unnecessarily too long as their relatives have to privately source for the necessary supplies.
… As consultants, our hearts bleed because of what is prevailing and we feel that if we continue pretending we can offer full services we would be complicit in the deaths of our patients.