South Darfur doctors threaten Ministry with strike

Doctors of the main hospital in the capital of South Darfur State have indicated that they will go on strike to protest the passivity of the Health Ministry on their demands for an improved working environment.

The hospital's doctors are short on colleagues, they claim, and demanded the state's Ministry of Health to contract additional doctors to reduce the workload.

Most of the doctors and hospital workers signed a memorandum in which they held the Ministry responsible for the deterioration of the situation at the Teaching Hospital.

On Thursday, the former director of the hospital, Ibrahim Ahmed El Tawil, told Radio Dabanga that the emergency department has stopped working as a result of the lack of doctors and equipment.

In November last year, doctors refused to work at night for nearly two weeks in a row in protest against the non-payment of supplements by the state Health Ministry. It was reported that on Sunday that four pregnant women and two road accident victims died in the maternity ward of the hospital, as the doctors refused to treat them on time.

Days later the Health Minister of South Darfur, Yagoub Ibrahim Eldmuki, acknowledged the deterioration of medical services in Nyala Teaching Hospital and the acute shortage of doctors, in addition to the financial arrears with the payment of the doctors’ salaries.

The hospital's medical workers also laid down their work in September, over a extreme delay in payments to them.