The Coalition of African National Medical Associations is calling on regional governments to make available budgetary provisions to cater for positions of intern doctors in the public service.
The body that brings together physicians in the African region has noted with concern the issues relating to medical intern doctors’ working conditions in East Africa.
The coalition’s coordinator, Dr. Osabon Enabulele particularly cites a proposition not to pay medical interns who have studied privately in Uganda, which prompted industrial action that has paralyzed health care services.
He says that arresting the interns is a further crisis in human resource for health care delivery, expplaining that governments must focus on progressive and motivational mechanisms to speedily resolve the unacceptable situation.
This comes a day after government tasked the Ministry of Finance to find funds to pay medical interns and striking Senior House Officers (SHOs), in a decision made during a Cabinet meeting held on Monday.
The ministry has thus promised to have the intern doctors’ allowance arrears amounting to Shs22 billion cleared by end of this week.
