Nigeria: Doctors strike begins

A nationwide strike of doctors in Nigeria has started today to protest poor wages and the lack of personal protective equipment supplied by the government.

The National Association of Resident Doctors said that they will no longer provide any medical treatment to patients, including emergency care and coronavirus treatment.

The Association is one of Nigeria’s largest doctors’ unions, and their strike has given rise to major concerns over patient welfare and an increase in coronavirus cases.

The union has said, “The strike shall…be total and indefinite. No service of any kind, be it emergency care at Covid-19 treatment centres shall be exempted”.

No date has yet been set for the strike to end, meaning that the healthcare system risks a full-scale breakdown if the strike lasts too long.

Nigeria has officially recorded 13,000 cases and 361 deaths. However, only 79,948 tests have been carried out in a population of 200 million.

Compared to its neighbour Ghana, which has carried out 250,000 tests in a population of 30 million, Nigeria’s testing efforts have been severely lacking.

Now that a third of all doctors nationwide are on strike, Nigeria will have to even more vigilant in its lockdown practices to contain the spread of the virus.  

Photo: AFP