Nicaragua Health Staff Join Doc Strike
Health Workers Federation´s (FETSALUD) decision to join striking doctors demanding wage improvements places Monday a new complexion to the situation in Nicaraguan public hospitals.

The union, with nearly 20,000 health employees, is starting the strike today, without closing emergency centers, to demand from the Executive a 48 percent salary raise, the closure of private rooms in public welfare centers plus a bigger budget for medicines.

Meanwhile, doctors said they would continue striking until the government guarantees a 70 percent wage increase.

But the Health Ministry argues the budget agreed with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) keeps it from granting a salary raise over 15 percent.

To protest such a position FETSALUD has announced demonstrations in front of the IMF and the World Bank offices in Managua as well as a nationwide march February 17.

The strike has semi-paralyzed the country´s 34 public hospitals, where neither external consultations nor operations scheduled the national health network have been carried out for weeks.

The danger of a general chaos in this Central American nation has increased lately after teachers, teamsters and legal workers voiced their intentions to stop work.

Education and transport workers gave the government until February 6 to meet their demands while legal workers went on strike from this Monday as they have not seen their salaries rise in two years.