For months, *Emeka Nwaeze had to shuttle back and forth between his family home in Owerri, the capital of southern Nigeria’s Imo state, and the federal hospital, where his 54-year-old mother suffering from kidney failure was placed on dialysis.
Then one night, her condition worsened. First thing in the morning, Nwaeze rushed her to the hospital but was told that “doctors just started their strike, therefore, she can’t be admitted.”
“Before we could get to any hospital, she went into a coma,” Nwaeze, a beauty salon entrepreneur, told Al Jazeera.
It was too late when she was admitted to a private hospital where the primary school teacher remained unresponsive and eventually died a week later.
Her case is not an isolated one. Many people, including COVID-19 and cancer patients, have been turned away at short-staffed hospitals across Nigeria since August 2, when thousands of resident doctors went on strike over unpaid salaries, poor facilities and insufficient hazard allowances. Others are left to die in hospital beds without being diagnosed or receiving treatment.
The striking doctors say they are worried about the wellbeing of their patients but place the blame on the federal government, saying it repeatedly failed to honour its pledges on improving the healthcare system.
“I have decided to join the strike because the government hasn’t fulfilled any of its promises made before,” said Yahaya Zubaida, a resident doctor at a public hospital in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja.
It is the fourth time that Zubaida and her colleagues have gone on strike since the coronavirus pandemic began last year. This time around, they insist their action would not be suspended until the demands – including pay rise and payment of previous unpaid salaries; an increase of hazard allowance; better facilities and equipment – are met by the government.
The government has responded to the doctors’ strike by invoking the “No Work, No Pay” rule, freezing the wages of the participants. The Minister of Health Osagie Ehanire warned the doctors not “to be used by enemies of the country to cause instability in the health sector”.
