An eleventh-hour promise that President Fernandez is to meet with the leadership of the Dominican Medical Association (CDM) by next Wednesday moved the CMD to hold off on the proposed work stoppage scheduled for today. The CMD leadership, headed by Dr. Waldo Suero met with the Minister of Public Health, Dr. Bautista Rojas Gomez, who told Hoy reporters that he and Suero had already met “discreetly” on several occasions. The strike was scheduled to shut down the nation’s public hospitals as well as hospitals belonging to the Social Security System. The medics were only going to treat emergency patients. The CMD’s unwavering demands are for higher salaries, the re-hiring of doctors who had been dismissed from their posts, repairs to most of the nation’s hospitals, and the supply of materials needed for their work, including medicines. So far, the CMD has gone on strike for as long as 48 hours six times in their quest for improved conditions for their members and for the patients they treat.