While more than 4,500 doctors have left Tunisia in less than a decade, the professionals who remained there raise their voice. The exodus accelerates, the dispute too. Faced with a crisis health system, unions are increasing mobilizations, denouncing a general degradation of working conditions.
Between 2017 and 2021, around 3,100 doctors left the country. In 2024, they were 1,450 to pack their suitcases, according to Rym Ghachem Attia, president of the National Council of the Order of Physicians. The most popular destinations: France, Germany, Saudi Arabia or Qatar. Luxury offers, attractive wages, worthy conditions – everything that is missing in the Tunisian public sector.
In hospitals, the situation is critical: dilapidated equipment, administrative overload, stagnant wages, insecurity in services. The ditch is widening, especially in the regions of the interior, deserted by specialists.
Faced with this hemorrhage, the fed up is organized. The general union of doctors, pharmacists and hospital-university dentists announced a petition for collective resignation, a strong act in solidarity with practitioners condemned in the case of “newborns”, and in reaction to justice accused of ignoring the reality of the hospital.
In response, the Union of University Hospitalian doctors launched a collective resignation petition yesterday April 21 which could collect nearly 2,000 signatures.
At the same time, the Tunisian organization of young doctors sparked a national strike yesterday too. On the agenda: revaluation of scholarships, payment of hours of childcare, best professional prospects. Interns and residents denounce structural precariousness, incompatible with the requirements of their mission.
And yet, in 2024, while the government multiplies promises to improve the working conditions of caregivers, a study by the Tunisian Institute of Strategic Studies brings an encouraging signal: 75 % of doctors working abroad wish to return to Tunisia. The Minister of Health, Mustapha Ferjani, announces future incentives and reforms. But in the field, the unions are demanding concrete measures, not repeated commitments.
“Eight out of ten departures concern young practitioners,” alerts Nizar Ladhari, secretary general of the Order of Doctors. An entire generation moves away, in an institutional silence that strike movements now want to break.
