Strike in the public hospitals: the RNDDH demands that the strikers' claims be met in full

On 21 February 2022 the Fédération Nationale des Travailleurs de la Santé called a strike in the country's public hospitals for better working conditions and a salary revision setting a base salary of sixty thousand gourdes for hospital and health centre staff. At least five major public hospitals stopped work almost entirely. On 31 March, thirty-eight days after it began, the strike was lifted in one of them, and the situation of the hospitals remained alarming with access to care uncertain.

The network visited several hospitals during March and reports what it found. Its closing point is about who pays: in a country where private care is extremely expensive and a large share of the population lives below the poverty line, the first victims of the state the public hospitals are kept in are the poorest. It asks the health authorities to meet the strikers' claims in full, to improve staff working conditions without delay, and to give the public hospitals what they need to offer patients a decent service.