Iraqi doctors protest over lack of jobs amid record surge in cases

DOCTORS protested outside Baghdad’s Ministry of Health yesterday, angered that young medical graduates are unable to find work in hospitals even as the healthcare system crumbles amid staff shortages and the Covid 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. “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 Daily Telegraph.

In July the government pledged to hire 2,500 doctors who graduated in 2019, after previously saying that 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.

According to Iraq Oil Report, even if the government had followed through on its pledge, it would still have left 30,000 medical graduates with other specialities unemployed. The staff shortages are destroying Iraq’s efforts to combat the virus.

Following years of turmoil, Iraq has been left with fewer than 30,000 doctors to serve a population of almost 40 million, with thousands having fled the country both due to violence and the widespread lack of payment.

“The Ministry of Health and Ministry of Education took our graduation documents so we can’t go abroad to work either,” claimed Ms al-jibouri.

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.

“Iraqi people are dying because of the shortage in healthcare personnel,” said recent graduate Qabas Albawy. “The government has done nothing about this. They are ignoring everything.”