Zimbabwean doctors’ difficult call: Do they have to strike to serve?

Clepantine Magara started working as a doctor to make other people’s lives easier. And he stopped working as a doctor when the work made his own nearly impossible.

For months Dr. Magara had watched as his salary halved in value, and then halved again, as inflation in Zimbabwe charged into the triple digits.

So in early September, he joined hundreds of other junior doctors working in public hospitals in Zimbabwe and went on strike.

“Yes, it’s a calling, but without [the salary] it takes to do what you have to do, [that calling] is nothing,” says Dr. Magara, standing at the main entrance to Parirenyatwa Hospital, the country’s largest.

The doctors’ predicament looks