The recent protests by Ethiopian doctors demanding salary increases have ignited intense national debate. While their frustrations are understandable, the context surrounding their demand reveals deeper, more troubling issues. This isn’t just about money—it’s about priorities, integrity, and the collapse of systems. The health sector in Ethiopia is broken from the ground up, and attempting to fix it by addressing salaries alone is like repainting a house that’s already burning. The doctors’ campaign reflects a larger crisis—one that implicates not just the government, but the entire culture of medical training and public service in the country.
To their credit, the doctors have not gone on an immediate strike. Instead, they’ve launched a 30-day countdown on social media, giving the government a deadline to respond to their demands. Each day, they post updates and reminders of the looming boycott, trying to build pressure without immediately abandoning their posts. However, this method—though more measured than a sudden walkout—still carries an ominous threat: if the government does not act, doctors will stop serving. In a country where public healthcare is already fragile, such a move risks turning an economic demand into a humanitarian crisis.
Of course, the pain doctors are feeling is real. Ethiopia’s economy is in shambles. Inflation has eroded the value of the birr, the cost of living has skyrocketed, and purchasing power is at historic lows. But this is not just the doctors’ burden—it is a shared national catastrophe. Teachers, civil servants, university professors, and ordinary laborers are all trying to survive in the same suffocating environment. Singling out one profession for financial rescue, while understandable, misses the broader point: the system itself is unsustainable. Any salary adjustment must be tied to wider economic reform—otherwise, it is just a bandage on a bullet wound.
What is particularly troubling is how little of the protest addresses the structural decay in the healthcare system itself. Hospitals lack basic medicine, equipment is outdated or broken, facilities are overcrowded, and rural clinics are woefully underserved. Yet the protest narrative is focused almost entirely on compensation. Where is the outrage about the inhumane working conditions? Where is the call for investment in infrastructure, training, research, and patient care? A healthcare system cannot improve simply by paying its workers more—it must be rebuilt from its foundations.
The problem begins with education. The medical training system in Ethiopia is deeply flawed. Instead of cultivating critical thinkers and innovative healers, it produces memorization machines. Textbook worship has replaced real research, and questioning authority is often seen as rebellion rather than progress. Many doctors graduate without having engaged with modern medical knowledge, AI tools, global research, or case-based analysis. In an age where information is abundant, clinging to rote learning is a disservice to both the profession and the public.
When doctors demand higher salaries, they must also ask: what value are we currently delivering? Is the standard of care high enough to justify increased compensation? Are we innovating, publishing research, building new models of care, or solving public health problems? Or are we simply demanding more money while offering the same stagnant service? Pay must be tied to performance, especially in a profession where lives are literally at stake.
Then there's the ethical question: what does it mean to be a doctor? Medicine is not just a career—it is a calling. It requires sacrifice, service, and moral clarity. If financial gain is the ultimate goal, there are many other professions that offer better returns with fewer burdens. A doctor who walks away from patients as a negotiating tactic is violating the very essence of their oath. Even the 30-day countdown, while technically legal, feels like a loaded gun placed on the negotiation table.
Worse still, there are signs that the protest is being co-opted by political actors with agendas that go far beyond healthcare. Whenever a movement becomes a hashtag war or a tool for opposition messaging, its legitimacy suffers. The protest risks being seen not as a genuine cry for reform, but as a politically charged disruption. And in such a fragile country, politicizing public health can be devastating.
In all of this, it is the patients—the poor, the voiceless, the rural, the desperate—who will suffer most. They don’t have private clinics. They don’t have money to fly abroad. They rely on the public system, flawed as it is, and they will be left to face the consequences of any boycott. Their lives become the collateral damage in a battle between professionals and politicians.
Reform must come before reward. Doctors must look inward, reexamine their purpose, improve their service, demand better training, and push for a stronger system—not just bigger paychecks. Only then will their demands hold the moral weight and public support they truly seek. Because without deep reform, a raise is just a temporary fix in a permanently broken system.
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