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Mansheyet El Bakry Hospital
Today is Day 9 of the strike.
The strike is strong everywhere.
Some hospitals joined the day before yesterday.
Some other hospitals joined yesterday.
This is Week 2 of the strike.
There has been no response at all. We can't feel it, see it or hear it.
We are not asking for the impossible.
We are asking for the restructuring of the Ministry of Health.
The former parliament admitted that the Ministry of Health is fraught with corruption, and there are files on this corruption.
If there are such files, why not submit them and get rid of those corrupt officials?
No justice can be done when corruption is everywhere.
Wealth disparity was a main cause of the revolution.
In the Ministry of Health there is wealth disparity everywhere.
This strike is long overdue.
Doctors, nurses and orderlies have not been able to get any of their rights for years.
We were hoping things would change for the better, but
prices have been rising and things are going from bad to worse.
Nursing is a humane profession.
But we need something back for what we give.
Yesterday we received a Ministry of Finance decree
that our incentives and overtime would be stopped and we'd only get our salaries
Our salaries are EGP 450 - and some make EGP 300
I've been working for 25 years and I make EGP 450.
With the rising cost of living, that doesn't go far at all.
Seasonal labour is what is keeping the hospital afloat.
There are workers who have been at the hospital for 20 years
and nothing has been done for them.
We are seasonal workers.
Our contracts are for 55 days. We are calling on the
Minister of Health and the government;
we're protesting our already poor salaries
EGP 285. And they deduct EGP 40 for social insurance and pensions
and we still don't have insurance or pensions!
There is no health without hygiene, and hygiene is health!
No doctor can use an operating room without orderlies
and no hospital department can be clean without orderlies.
There is an well-known rule: he who lacks something cannot grant it.
How can we ask a doctor to fully perform his duties
or a nurse to nurse and care for a patient and perform her duties
without giving her even part of her rights!
In our strike, I confirm with our doctors
to examine any patients in reception.
Any case requiring external treatment is prescribed external treatment
There is no problem. To people who say "how will this pressure the government?"
We are pressuring the government, not patients.
Patients are family.
Patients concern me more than they concern the government.
Ahmed Maher Teaching Hospital
Today we are protesting after Day 9 of the strike
because none of our demands have been met
and until today no one cares what we're doing or saying here
no one cares what we want or what we're talking about.
All that people are saying and what the corrupt media is claiming
is that we want money, wage increases, etc,
We want Egyptian patients who die in front of our eyes
while we watch helplessly, not able to even give them painkillers
in an unequipped hospital - we want people
to care about them. We want people to know
that doctors aren't protesting for partisan demands
or for more money or anything.
We want Egyptian patients to be treated with dignity
in a hospital with equipment that can treat them and ease their pain
without us having to apply compression with our bare hands.
Mr. Prime Minister, who goes to airports to inspect
the bathrooms for the the pilgrim departure hall, should come down
to the hospitals and see how patients suffer!
My name is Mohammed Ramadan Ahmed.
I am a liver failure patient and I am being treated
at the dialysis unit here at Ahmed Maher Hospital.
I am participating in the doctors' strike and am in solidarity
with them because they don't just want salary increases
as people think, or just their personal interests, but they
are talking about my interests as a patient first.
They're talking about increasing the Ministry of Health budget
because it's appalling for a state to have only 5% of its budget
or even 4% going to the Ministry of Health while 15% of the
budget goes to the police and army.
I'd just like to point out an important thing that we as
doctors and neonatologists are outside the strike.
We have not gone on strike and are not on strike
along with the emergency room doctors.
We are not on strike but we came down after work today
to join our colleagues at this protest.
President Morsy said the salary restructures would be applied
How? When? Where? They're just words said in nice speeches that sound good
and people tell you, fine, they're going to restructure.
But it's not about that, it's not that we want money
we're talking about the Ministry of Health budget!
We want Egyptian patients to be treated humanely!
When a patient goes into hospital he should find every form of relief
so that it's not both outside and inside the hospital that he
can't find the smallest amount of humaneness.
After 13 days of the doctors' strike without a response doctors announced the commencement of a mass resignation campaign.
For more information visit the High Committee for the October 2012 Doctors' Strike site.
Subtitles by the Amara.org community