Govt should engage doctors before impending strike

Doctors from the UPDF, police and Uganda Prisons were deployed in public hospitals as the strike by civilian doctors entered another week. This was in November 2017.

The doctors from security agencies were to handle emergency cases as their counterparts from the Uganda Medical Association (UMA) began nationwide industrial action over government’s failure to meet their demands for increased salary and allowances as well as a review of the supply of medicines and other equipment to health centres.

The strike left the public healthcare system paralysed, with this newspaper at the time reporting deaths of patients as a result. In the end, government promised to increase the pay of medical workers after the recommendation of a salary review commission.

Close to four years later, the doctors have again threatened to lay down their tools. The doctors this week issued a one-month ultimatum to government to ensure that the salary changes are implemented, lest they withdraw their services.

The Public Service (Negotiating, Consultative and Disputes Settlement Machinery) Act No 10 of 2008 gives workers the right to withdraw labour, or call for a strike in furtherance of a labour dispute provided the negotiating machinery is exhausted.

Among the demands the medical practitioners have tabled is improved working environment for proper management of the Covid-19 pandemic. Uganda recently witnessed a second wave of the pandemic that claimed at least 20 doctors. More than 3,000 health workers have contracted the disease and more than 50 succumbed to it since the pandemic first hit Uganda early last year.

The doctors also demand medical insurance because, they say, many of them provide services they cannot afford. They also want more medical practitioners recruited to fill the gaps in the health sector.
In a country that has only 40 per cent of positions for doctors filled, government had better fulfil its promise to the doctors.

The longstanding rift between the medical workers and government should be put to rest once and for all.
Otherwise, it is the public that suffers in the end. In the past two months alone, according to the UMA president, Dr Richard Idro, Botswana, Namibia and Kenya have poached Uganda doctors.

Government spends a lot of money training these doctors – producing 500 doctors annually – but hands them over to other countries that can pay the wages they deserve.

To prevent a repeat of the 2017 scenario, government should fulfil its obligation. The President has severally tasked technocrats to prioritise the payment of doctors, and scientists in general, but it is not clear where the problem lies.
Government needs to improve the health infrastructure and welfare of the medical workers if this impasse is to be put to rest.

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