By Rutendo Bamu:

Senior medical doctors have joined the industrial action by their juniors citing low wages and poor working conditions, further throwing the medical fraternity into chaos as patients have no-one to attend to them.

The senior doctors informed their employer, Health Services Board, on Wednesday that they were going to down tools starting Thursday if their grievances were not immediately addressed.

The industrial action further strains the medical sector, where junior doctors have been on strike August 3, 2019, protesting against poor working conditions and the declining value of their incomes.

Poor patients are bearing the brunt of the doctors’ industrial action as they cannot afford to pay for private medical care whose costs have shot astronomically as the Zimdollar continues to slide against the greenback.

A cancer patient, Mercy Mutanda, who had come to Parirenyatwa Hospital for chemotherapy said the government should urgently intervene to stop the crisis as she was not be attended to, further endangering her chances of recovery.

Many patients have since been discharged from wards despite not being fully healed, living them at risk of infection or complicating their conditions.

“I am not being treated because my chemotherapy is done in the ward which is closed. I was discharged last Friday, while I was on chemotherapy and I didn’t finish my cycle. The government should see and help us so that we are treated.

“My mother was discharged even though he was still sick and we can’t collect her results because they need to be certified by doctors who are not,” said Tendai Mawuwe