With medical workers on strike over wages so low that a junior doctor’s monthly salary won’t cover a single tank of gas, Zimbabwe’s health care system has come to a “near-total halt.”

An op-ed published by the Institute for War & Peace Reporting claims that the strike, underway since December 21, is killing “hundreds” of patients weekly, and was caused by government neglect of a once-admired health care system that today denies service to 90 percent of the population.

The anonymous author says the international community is ignoring the problem, even while senior Zimbabwean officials fly to South Africa and elsewhere to receive health care.

Source:

“Zimbabwe: Health system near total collapse”
Institute for War and Peace Reporting, January 30, 2007