Paraguayan health professionals began a 96-hour national strike on Monday over stalled talks with authorities on working conditions in the public system, the National Union of Physicians (Sinamed) reported.
The measure, which will extend over four days, halts ambulatory care to protest the state’s failure to reduce and equalize the work schedule to 12 weekly hours per employment contract.
The decision to strike was ratified after negotiations collapsed at the tripartite table held between union representatives and the Government.
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From the union, leaders emphasize that the demand seeks to end precarious working conditions and contractual inequalities affecting workers in the public health sector, advancing a historical struggle for full recognition of labor dignity. The movement revives the debate on social investment in Paraguay’s health system and reaffirms the mobilizing role of professionals in defense of the right to fair working conditions.
The strike affects external clinics and the scheduling of non-urgent surgeries. However, trade union organizations and workers guaranteed the operation of essential services to safeguard the population’s lives. Emergency rooms, intensive care units, hospitalization centers, oncological interventions and the delivery of urgent pharmacological supplies remain active under contingency plans.
Médicos e insumos en crisis: Masiva huelga de salud paraliza hospitales públicos en Paraguay
Miles de profesionales de la salud iniciaron una huelga nacional en Asunción para exigir mejoras salariales, insumos básicos y condiciones laborales dignas. La movilización,… pic.twitter.com/SGYLWkaCqN
— El Ciudadano (@El_Ciudadano) August 25, 2026
Text reads: “Doctors and supplies in crisis: Massive health strike paralyzes public hospitals in Paraguay. Thousands of health-care professionals started a national strike in Asunción to demand better wages, basic inputs and decent working conditions. The mobilization, which affects more than 1,500 centers of the public network, keeps outpatient consultations and non-urgent surgeries suspended. Medical associations denounced the serious saturation of the system and the deterioration of health facilities, in a scenario also marked by the massive debt of the state with suppliers of medicines and medical supplies.”
Essential Services Remain Active
Faced with the paralysis of external consultations, workers demand that the Ministry of Health move from speeches to concrete commitments, avoiding patch solutions that perpetuate the exhaustion of health personnel. Union organizations have classified the current health management as one of the most deficient of recent years, holding the far-right government of President Santiago Peña responsible for indifference before the hospital crisis and labor precariousness.
During the protest days, the union raised four central demands: salary readjustment, double payment for holidays, de-precarization of contracted personnel and a guarantee of supplies and adequate infrastructure in health centers. The last time doctors dependent on Paraguay’s Ministry of Health received a salary adjustment was in 2012, during the administration of then-president Fernando Lugo. Fourteen years later, health personnel began a four-day stoppage to claim the right to fair remuneration and denounce the historical abandonment of the sector.
The strike counts on the support of patient organizations that denounce the serious shortage of medicines and supplies in the public network. Members of these movements state that the lack of hospital resources puts human lives at risk daily, forcing families to mobilize to demand basic care and the supply of essential drugs.
The mobilization takes place in a context of growing social unrest in Paraguay, where unions and social movements have repeatedly protested against the management of Santiago Peña. The doctors’ strike adds to a wave of demands that question the Government’s priorities in public spending and its commitment to the right to health as a fundamental guarantee.
The coming days will be decisive: whether the Government returns to the negotiating table with concrete proposals or whether the conflict deepens, expanding the scope of a protest that already places Paraguay’s public health at the center of national debate.
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