There is great anticipation and hope on both sides of the more than five-month old doctors’ strike with the assembly of the Asociación Médica Dominicana (AMD) scheduled for Tuesday, 9 April. The striking doctors will consider a new proposal for a lifting of the work stoppage, formed in the mediating commission given the responsibility of ending the deadlock. The Minister of Public Health, Dr. Victor Garcia Santos, has predicted the end of the strike after the assembly, and claims that over 70% of the AMD members on strike have returned to work in public hospitals and those of the Instituto Dominicano de Seguro Social. He also denied statements made by the AMD’s president, Dr. Francisco Cano Gonzalez, that the infant mortality rate at the pediatric hospital, Arturo Grullon, was out of control. After visiting the hospital, Dr Garcia Santos told the news media that the infant mortality rate was 3%,, which he said is normal.
The current doctors’ strike is the longest in the history of the D.R., and the return to work by some doctors, together with hints of a break in the unity of AMD members in recent weeks, have led to the speculation that an end to the work stoppage is in sight. The doctors are demanding the payment of salaries for January, February and March, as well as the honoring of an accord signed between the AMD and the government last 7 August. The failure to comply with the said agreement, according to the AMD, was the original cause of the work stoppage. It includes a 20% salary increase that was to begin last December, a fixed import tax for vehicles imported by AMD members, and the accommodation of AMD doctors in housing projects currently being constructed by the government in the areas near the Haitian border.
12-18 April 1996