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Egypt's striking doctors threaten to submit resignations en masse Doctors striking for improved working conditions vow to tender 15,000 resignations if Egypt's health ministry fails to address their longstanding grievances
Egyptian doctors, who have been waging a partial strike since 1 October, are now ratcheting up pressure on Egypt's health ministry by threatening to submit their resignations en masse. According to the strike's general committee, at least 15,000 doctors' resignations will be tendered within coming days if their demands go unmet. The resignations will include that of Egyptian Doctors Syndicateboard member and prominent activist Mona Mina, who is also a founding member of the 'Doctors without Rights' campaign. Mina, who has played a leading role in the ongoing strike, stated at a Sunday press conference that the mass resignations represented a new means of pressing for doctors' rights. Strikers have been calling for 15 per cent of the state budget to be allocated to public health (up from the current 5 per cent), salary increases for doctors, and security upgrades at Egypt's hospitals and medical centres, which have been the targets of recent attacks. The idea behind the mass resignations, explained general committee member Sanaa Fouad, is to force an investigation into doctors' complaints.According to Egyptian labour laws, resignations tendered for specific reasons must be investigated before being denied or accepted. In their written resignations, doctors will attribute their decision to the fact that none of their grievances had yet been addressed even though the strike had been ongoing since 1 October, and to the fact that public healthcare in Egypt – as it currently stands – could neither guarantee a good living for doctors nor adequate healthcare for patients. "We will not submit our resignations until we have at least 15,000," Fouad told Ahram Online. According to estimates, roughly 100,000 doctors at Egyptian state-run hospitals are participating in the strike. While Mina believes the strike has succeeded by 90 per cent, Assistant Health Minister Ibrahim Mostafa recently told reporters that 69 per cent of hospitals nationwide were currently working at full capacity. "The board of the national doctors' syndicate, along with the health ministry, has embarked on a counter attack in the media in an attempt to break our strike," claimed Fouad. "But the strike was a decision made by the doctors' general assembly, which should have the final say." He added: "The national syndicate board continues to argue for the right to work, but we're defending the right to strike." Although the syndicate board is controlled by Muslim Brotherhood members who have come out against the doctors' strike, the majority of the syndicate's provincial boards were won by the Independence List in elections last year. The Independence List, whose members have for years been supporting doctors' demands for better working conditions, achieved unprecedented victories in the last syndicate elections. While the Muslim Brotherhood list still managed to win control of the national syndicate board, the Independence List was nevertheless able to win six seats on the board as well as near total control of provincial syndicate boards in the Ismailiya, Suez and Aswan governorates. In Alexandria, Egypt's second largest city, Independence candidates won 14 out of 16 seats, while the Brotherhood was left with only two seats. In Cairo, meanwhile, home to the country's largest concentration of physicians, the Independence List garnered almost 70 per cent of the vote, going on to win solid majorities on syndicate boards in 14 out of 27 governorates. "Members of the national syndicate board have stated that striking doctors were fomenting strife between the syndicate and the health ministry," Fouad complained. "This is a very strange argument considering that our current strike is against health ministry policies." Visibly frustrated, he added: "Members of the national syndicate board are now betraying those that voted for them." http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/55600.aspx
