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NewsDay

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‘Govt must grant striking doctors their wishes’

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Relatives of patients admitted at Parirenyatwa and Harare hospitals have pleaded with government to grant striking doctors what they have been asking for so that they can resume work and save lines.

BY Ruvimbo Muchenje / Elinera Manyonga

Relatives of patients admitted at Parirenyatwa and Harare hospitals have pleaded with government to grant striking doctors what they have been asking for so that they can resume work and save lives.

Relatives looked on as the doctors marched at the hospital yesterday while their loved ones lay helpless in the wards.

Tendai Madzima, an elderly woman from Gutu, came to Harare a month ago with her husband, who had suffered a fracture on his knee and on the hip.

The husband was admitted at Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals on September 2 and his leg has been hung since then, but not attended to because of the strike.

“Today marks a month since he was admitted in hospital. Nurses just tell us to buy injections to ease the pain that he is in. We booked for an operation three weeks ago, but it wasn’t done because the doctors are not coming to work,” Madzima said.

She just wants to take her husband home because he is not getting any better at the hospital.

“I just want to take him to Gutu. We will just suffer together down there because whenever I ask him how he is feeling, he says he is in so much pain,” Madzima said.

Betty Mubai’s father, who is aged 63-year-old, had water drained from his lungs, but later on developed a boil around the area that was stitched.

The pus-filled boil has become a source of pain for him and the results from the tests performed on the boil cannot be interpreted because the doctors are not at work.

“I left my father lying in bed helpless and I came here hoping that the doctors would be back at work so that we would have the results interpreted and we find a way forward,” she said.

Mubai says the situation would have been better if government had heeded to the doctors’ demands for better pay and supply of adequate drugs and equipment.

“We are hoping government gives these hardworking doctors what they are asking for so that they start working. Our relatives are dying at home because the doctors are not going to work,” she said.

Telianah Musaiiwa said her daughter, currently admitted at Parirenyatwa, would not be able to write her Ordinary Level examinations as there was no doctor to sign a letter allowing her to take her examinations from her hospital bed.