Paraguay excluded the doctors’ union from health talks as 446 specialists resigned, rejecting job insecurity, low wages and shortages of medicines.
The exclusion took place on Monday, September 7, when the Ministry of Health held talks with healthcare workers without inviting National Doctors’ Union (Sinamed) to the negotiations. Doctors and other specialists have been on strike for weeks, protesting precarious working conditions, low wages, and shortages of medicine and other supplies.
The last time doctors under the Ministry of Health received a salary adjustment was in 2012, during the administration of then-President Fernando Lugo, underscoring just how long the grievance has festered.
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Dr. Rossana González accused the Ministry of Health of attempting to divide the medical profession, while Dr. Roberto Riveros, Secretary of the Paraguayan Society of Pediatric Surgery, said that union representatives had acted as intermediaries to receive the government’s new proposal and relay it to other guilds. He stressed, however, that these groups remain aligned with the position of the National Doctors’ Union and do not consider themselves a substitute for the excluded union.
AHORA
Integrantes del Sindicato Nacional de Médicos (Sinamed) llegaron hasta el Ministerio de Trabajo para oficializar una nueva huelga.
La medida de fuerza se llevará a cabo los días 21 y 22 de septiembre.
Buscan que médicos del interior se sumen a una gran marcha.… pic.twitter.com/vGirNPBikW
— ABC Digital (@ABCDigital) September 8, 2026
Text reads: “Members of the National Union of Doctors (Sinamed) reached the Ministry of Labor to formalize a new strike. The force will take place on September 21 and 22. They are looking for doctors from the interior to join a big march.”
According to Riveros, the proposal presented by the government on Monday includes what he described only as “a small salary increase,“ without providing further details, along with a “medical ranking” mechanism that would grant salary supplements based on seniority and level of training -a system that would also cover doctors without a specialty.
Doctors Escalate Protest
The National Doctors’ Union rejected the government’s approach outright. “We have not been invited or included in any official meeting with government representatives, nor have we received any official proposal,” the union said in a statement, while also announcing a new two-day strike for September 21 and 22. The doctors are demanding a salary adjustment, better working conditions, and guaranteed availability of medical supplies and medicine in hospitals -the same core demands that have driven the strike since its early weeks.
Health authorities confirmed that at least 446 specialists have already filed individual resignations through official channels, a wave that has left hospitals across the country struggling to function. That figure marks a sharp increase from the more than 431 resignations reported just days earlier, signaling that the crisis is intensifying rather than easing despite the government’s outreach to some union representatives.
Labor organizations have described the current health administration as one of the most deficient in recent years, placing blame squarely on Peña’s far-right government for what they call indifference toward the hospital crisis and the precarious conditions facing medical staff. With the union now openly excluded from talks and a new strike scheduled for later this month, the standoff shows few signs of resolution, raising the prospect of further disruptions to Paraguay’s public health system in the weeks ahead.
From teleSUR English via This RSS Feed.