Nigerian doctors strike for better benefits during coronavirus crisis

ABUJA, June 15 (Reuters) - Resident doctors in Nigerian
public hospitals went on strike on Monday to demand better
benefits as they battle the coronavirus pandemic in Africa's
most populous country, the union said.
Those treating COVID-19 patients will stay on the job but
their union, the National Association of Resident Doctors
(NARD), gave the government two weeks to meet the demands or
else they would also walk out.
Resident doctors are those who have graduated from medical
school and are training as specialist consultants. They are
pivotal to frontline healthcare in Nigeria as they dominate the
emergency wards in its hospitals.
Strikes are common in Nigeria's public health system, with
clinicians frequently seeking pay rises and improvements to
under-funded infrastructure to meet the rising burden of
healthcare in the West African nation of 200 million people.
"If the government fails to meet our minimum demands within
two weeks, the resident doctors working in (COVID-19) isolation
centres will automatically join the strike," Aliyu Sokomba, the
head of the union, said in a statement.
The resident doctors are seeking a COVID-19 pay supplement
in addition to life insurance for doctors and more funds in the
federal budget for their training, among other demands.
NARD has complained about inadequate protective equipment to
treat COVID-19 patients and has said that 10 doctors have died
so far from the highly infectious respiratory disease.
Nigeria has had more than 16,000 confirmed cases of the
virus and 420 deaths. Most of the cases have been in Lagos,
sub-Saharan Africa's biggest city with some 20 million
inhabitants.
Last month, doctors in Lagos staged a one-day strike over
what they described as police harassment of health workers
trying to move through the city to treat patients during a
coronavirus curfew.