MEDICAL STUDENTS VOW TO MAINTAIN STRIKE

By Ehsan Khaleel
SAM Daily Times

Dr. Souissi Mohamed Hedi, (center) and protesting students at the Medical Institute, January 17, 2014.
Image credit: Simon Speakman Cordall, Tunisia Live

Tunisia: A strike by medical interns and residents, under the auspices of the Syndicate for Medical Interns and Residents, has entered its second week as protests continue against the introduction of a law obliging medical students to work a further three years in public hospitals beyond that currently required by their studies.


Students at the Faculty of Medicine in Tunis are staging a sit-in in the building’s main hall. They are eating and sleeping there, continuing their protest against the proposed law. Medical residents across Tunisia have refused to choose their specialty for the first half of the year in a further bid to demonstrate their resistance to the new law.

In total, according to the syndicate, around 8,000 medical students are presently engaged in the protest.


“I’m against this law, which has only been conceived for political purposes, “ fourth-year cardiology resident Salah Annabi told Tunisia Live. “Assembly member Bechir Lazzem was on TV, talking about a letter he’d received from Tatouine saying there were no gynecological specialists there, so on that basis, he made the decision to send five hundred specialists to public hospitals throughout the regions.”

Minister of Health Abdellatif Mekki said in early January that the law will improve access to different health services in Tunisia’s less-developed interior regions.


“The lack or absence of some necessary medical specialties like cardiology, pediatrics, and emergency medicine could be a harm to citizens,”