Doctors at Nigerian public hospitals went on strike Monday, June 15, to demand better working conditions, but said those treating patients with coronavirus would continue to work.
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Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa with 200 million people, has registered 16,085 cases and 420 deaths since the first known case of the virus in February, and more than 800 health workers have been infected, according to the Nigeria Center for Disease Control. "We have decided to start a full strike until further notice, which only COVID-19 treatment centers are exempt from , " said the National Association of Resident Physicians (NARD) in a tweet, which represents approximately 40% of doctors of the country.
Contacted by AFP, its president, Aliyu Sokomba, justified the exemption, explaining that it should not "deprive COVID-19 patients of care" . But he warned that even the exempt doctors would join the movement if their demands were not heard within two weeks. "If they continue to be disingenuous, we may have no choice but to designate the doctors we have exempted to join the strike," he said.
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The union denounces a whole series of shortcomings by the state, in particular the “totally inadequate” provision of protective equipment and demands a risk premium for those working on the virus. Other more general demands concern the improvement of working conditions and denounce the dismissals and reductions in doctors' wages.
Strikes are common in Nigeria, where the health sector has been neglected and underfunded for decades and dilapidated infrastructure.
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