Iraqi doctors protest unemployment as coronavirus cases surge
Doctors protested outside Baghdad’s Ministry of Health on Sunday, angered that young medical graduates are unable to find work in hospitals even as the healthcare system crumbles amid staff shortages and the coronavirus crisis.
On Friday, Iraq recorded its highest single-day rise in Covid-19 cases since the start of the pandemic, with 5,036 new cases.
Yet in a country that desperately needs doctors, there is no money to hire them. Thousands of graduate doctors have been left unemployed for over a year after the government failed to meet a pledge to employ them to fight the pandemic.
Saja al-Jibouri, 25, is one of them - unemployed after six years of medical school and desperate to put her qualifications to good use. “Despite the shortage of doctors in hospitals at a time of such crisis, we have still been left jobless. We are demanding our rights. The resident doctors need PPE and protection and we need jobs [to tackle the virus],” she told The Telegraph.
In July the government pledged to hire 2,500 doctors who graduated in 2019, after previously saying they would have to simply volunteer at state health departments to continue their training.
However, a lack of government funding and the fact that the previous government did not pass a budget for 2020 has prevented the government from hiring the graduates.
The staff shortages are destroying Iraq’s efforts to combat the virus. Following years of turmoil, the country has been left with fewer than 30,000 doctors to serve a population of almost 40 million. According to Iraq Oil Report, even if the government had followed through on its pledge, it would have left 30,000 medical graduates with other specialties unemployed.
“The Ministry of Health and Ministry of Education took our graduation documents so we can’t go abroad to work either,” Ms al-Jibouri claimed.
The state of Iraq’s healthcare sector and its rapid loss of control over the pandemic reflect the country's deep economic struggles.
According to protesters, they are giving the Ministry of Health 48 hours before resident doctors announce a general strike.
