Payment of the January, February and March salaries to striking doctors, the last obstacle to the lifting of the five-month-old work stoppage, was made by the Ministry of Public Health, but apparently not by the hospitals of the Instituto Dominicano de Seguro Social (IDSS). While the news media reported that some doctors employed at the public hospitals of the Ministry of Public Health were returning to work, those of the IDSS were planning to picket in front of the IDSS’s main office last week. The payment to doctors at the IDSS hospitals would seem to be the last step necessary to completely normalizing conditions in all public hospitals. The director of the IDSS, Orestes Guerrero, told Hoy newspaper that its board of directors decided not to pay its doctors for time lost, in addition to the dismissal of 500 members of the Asociación Medica Dominicana (AMD) who participated in the work stoppage. He also said that the decision to retain the checks could only be reversed by another meeting of the board in the presence of the AMD’s president, Dr. Francisco Cano González
Meanwhile, patients at public hospitals continue to be treated by AMD members who have gone back to work and by military doctors who were sent in by the government on 15 January.
19 April – 2 May 1996