By RFIPalled on 18-09-2019Modified on 18-09-2019 at 12:26

In Zimbabwe, doctors and nurses continue to protest after the disappearance of one of their colleagues, Dr. Peter Magombeyi, president of the hospital doctors union, on 14 September. His organization accuses state security of kidnapping him after he denounced the dilapidated health sector.

In this public hospital in the Zimbabwean capital Harare, the corridors are almost empty. Since the beginning of the month, doctors are on strike. " We no longer have the financial means to come to work , laments a doctor who does not want to give his name, for fear of reprisals. There are so many problems of numbers, drugs, motivation. Nothing works here. Even the country does not work. Nurses, for example, do not work every day. They come only three times a week because the government can not pay them. Now, it is the doctors who do not come because they can not pay for their transport. "

The average salary of a public sector doctor is about $ 100 a month, a third of which goes into transportation to work. Everyone is unmotivated, admits Sarah, a third-year medical student.

" Every day, you face depressing situations, where you can not help a patient ," she says. For example, someone arrives with head trauma, and you need to do a scanner but you do not have the equipment. The condition of the patient is deteriorating and you can not do anything. "

Beside her, her friend agrees. " The most enraging thing ," she adds, " is that former president Robert Mugabe has been treated in a private hospital in Singapore . He let the hospitals deteriorate to such an extent that he himself left and died abroad. When we see the hospital where he was being treated, it was a very expensive hospital and he stayed there a long time. It's sad. If only he could have used the money they spent there to improve the condition of our hospitals ... "

Both admit that three-quarters of medical students are waiting for one thing: to finish their studies and go abroad.

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