The board of the Doctors Syndicate will call for a strike in all hospitals countrywide starting 1 October , on the first of October unless their demands are met.
The strike will be preceded by protests in Cairo and other governorates with doctors wearing white coats and black scarves. Syndicate members will also organize sit-ins within subsidiary unions.
Doctors are protesting the government’s impassiveness towards their demands to increase funding allocated to the health sector to 15 percent and to activate a police department for guarding health institutions.
The Doctors Syndicate board held an emergency meeting Thursday evening to discuss their demands and the agenda for the general assembly, scheduled for 21 September.
The Syndicate said in a statement Friday that it will request an emergency meeting with the president, the prime minister and ministers concerned with health affairs in order to agree on a timetable for meeting their demands.
Syndicate members emphasized that their “partial” strike would not include emergency cases, and would be limited to cases that are not serious.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
