Zimbabwe church worker says strike of doctors, nurses must end

Published: 2007-01-30

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (CNS) -- A strike by doctors and nurses in Zimbabwe is causing "untold human suffering and loss of life," said the country's Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace. Sick and injured people are turned away from the main state hospitals "and their only other option is to go to private hospitals, which is unaffordable for most Zimbabweans," Alouis Chaumba, who heads the commission, said in a Jan. 28 telephone interview from the capital, Harare. "There is no solution in sight" to the strike that began in late December, he said. "The government must take action now to end it, as this concerns life and death." No one knows how many Zimbabweans have died as a result of the strike because it is ignored by the country's state-controlled media, Chaumba said. Almost all media in Zimbabwe are under government control. Zimbabwe has the fastest-declining economy in the world, a brain drain of professionals, an inflation rate of more than 1,000 percent and escalating corruption.

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