From June 12, 2025, the young Tunisian doctors will start a five -day national strike and boycott the internship centers. Supported by their hospital elders and the order of doctors, they denounce the precariousness of their working conditions and claim concrete reforms.
The health sector is preparing for a new jolt. The Tunisian organization of young doctors (OTJM) announced a general strike of five days in all public hospitals, accompanied by a boycott of internship centers, as of Thursday, June 12, 2025.
In a declaration granted today to Mosaic FM, Wajih Dhakar, president of the OTJM, said that this movement is part of a series of claims long ignored by the authorities. He said that the strike benefits from the support of hospital doctors as well as the National Council of the Order of Physicians, a sign of a united medical front in the face of the mutism of the government.
Claims: working conditions, bonuses, national service
Young doctors denounce a continuous degradation of their working conditions, deemed unworthy and exhausting, both material and moral. They also demand a revaluation of premiums, often deemed insufficient compared to the workload assumed, especially in regional hospitals and emergency services.
Another major tension point: the effective application of the national service exemption for doctors, a long -standing promise remained a dead letter according to the OTJM. For many training practitioners, this obligation is perceived as a double penalty which hinders their career and their personal stability.
A broader structural crisis
This new showdown comes in a context of chronic crisis in the public health system, marked by the flight of skills, lack of equipment, and structural reforms at the stop. In 2024, several similar movements had already shaken the sector, without leading to concrete advances according to the unions.
Faced with this mobilization which risks strongly disrupting hospital services in mid-June, the OTJM calls on the authorities to open a serious dialogue and to stop “treating young doctors as an adjustment variable”. If no agreement is reached by then, the union does not exclude intensifying the movement beyond June 17.
The looks are now turned to the Ministry of Health, which will have to respond to these claims under penalty of aggravating an already palpable social tension in Tunisian hospitals.
