Unpaid doctors strike in Nigeria amid new COVID-19 surge

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — Dr Olaniyi Olaoye and the other resident doctors at the Ekiti State University Teaching Hospital in Nigeria haven't been paid at all for five months.

Since the pandemic began, there have been many months when they've only received 60% of their salaries, bringing at least six of them to resign.

Now Olaoye and some 19,000 other doctors across Africa's most populous nation are on strike for the fourth time since the pandemic began, leaving government-run hospitals and COVID-19 treatment centres short-staffed.

The latest work stoppage comes as Nigeria confronts an avalanche of new COVID-19 cases blamed on the delta variant first detected here in early July.

Doctors who are lucky have wives who work and are depending on their income, he said.

“Life is difficult for those who are not,” he said.

Already Nigerian media outlets are reporting that patients — some with COVID-19 symptoms — are being turned away at short-staffed hospitals.

Other patients have been discharged into the streets or left to languish in hospital beds without being diagnosed or receiving treatment.

At the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, The Associated Press witnessed two patients turned away shortly after they arrived at the emergency room last week.

“We cannot admit — resident doctors are on strike,” a doctor on duty was overheard telling one of the patients.

“When they call off the strike, you come back.”

Uyilawa Okhuaihesuyi, president of the National Association of Resident Doctors, said the federal health ministry has sent him a letter warning that the country's 19,000 medical residents don't have the right to strike.

“Imagine a doctor not paid for 16 months in some states,” Okhuaihesuyi told The Associated Press.

“How does he even provide food for his family?”

Nigerian Health Minister Dr. Osagie Ehanire and the Federal Ministry of Health both declined to comment and said a briefing would be held at a later date.

The strike is the fourth work stoppage by medical residents since the pandemic began, the longest of which lasted 10 days.

While the current work stoppage does not affect specialist doctors or nurses, medical residents make up the bulk of health care workers at government hospitals throughout Nigeria, and they also staff most of the government-run treatment facilities for COVID-19.

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