
Please try another search
ABUJA (Reuters) - Resident doctors in Nigerian public hospitals went on strike on Monday to demand better benefits as they battle the coronavirus pandemic in Africa's most populous country, the union said.
Those treating COVID-19 patients will stay on the job but their union, the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD), gave the government two weeks to meet the demands or else they would also walk out.
Resident doctors are those who have graduated from medical school and are training as specialist consultants. They are pivotal to frontline healthcare in Nigeria as they dominate the emergency wards in its hospitals.
Strikes are common in Nigeria's public health system, with clinicians frequently seeking pay rises and improvements to under-funded infrastructure to meet the rising burden of healthcare in the West African nation of 200 million people.
"If the government fails to meet our minimum demands within two weeks, the resident doctors working in (COVID-19) isolation centers will automatically join the strike," Aliyu Sokomba, the head of the union, said in a statement.
The resident doctors are seeking a COVID-19 pay supplement in addition to life insurance for doctors and more funds in the federal budget for their training, among other demands.
NARD has complained about inadequate protective equipment to treat COVID-19 patients and has said that 10 doctors have died so far from the highly infectious respiratory disease.
Nigeria has had more than 16,000 confirmed cases of the virus and 420 deaths. Most of the cases have been in Lagos, sub-Saharan Africa's biggest city with some 20 million inhabitants.
Last month, doctors in Lagos staged a one-day strike over what they described as police harassment of health workers trying to move through the city to treat patients during a coronavirus curfew.
Are you sure you want to block %USER_NAME%?
By doing so, you and %USER_NAME% will not be able to see any of each other's Investing.com's posts.
%USER_NAME% was successfully added to your Block List
Since you’ve just unblocked this person, you must wait 48 hours before renewing the block.
I feel that this comment is:
Thank You!
Your report has been sent to our moderators for review
Add a Comment
We encourage you to use comments to engage with other users, share your perspective and ask questions of authors and each other. However, in order to maintain the high level of discourse we’ve all come to value and expect, please keep the following criteria in mind:
Enrich the conversation, don’t trash it.
Stay focused and on track. Only post material that’s relevant to the topic being discussed.
Be respectful. Even negative opinions can be framed positively and diplomatically. Avoid profanity, slander or personal attacks directed at an author or another user. Racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination will not be tolerated.
Perpetrators of spam or abuse will be deleted from the site and prohibited from future registration at Investing.com’s discretion.