Moroccan Doctors Protest Nationwide Following Colleague’s Suspicious Death

Just after the death of Yassine Rachid, a resident doctor in the urology department of the Ibn Rochd University Hospital in Casablanca, an emergency meeting was held on Sunday between the National Commission of Doctors, Pharmacists and Dentists and the National Commission of Resident and Intern Doctors of Morocco. Several actions were decided, the first on the list being a sit-in scheduled for this Wednesday in all the university hospitals of Morocco. For many of his colleagues, if the doctor had come to this extreme, it is because he was a victim of various forms of injustice and systematic abuse perpetrated by one of his professors, reports Hespress.

In a joint statement, the two commissions examining the case stress that "the abuse this young doctor was subjected to pushed him to decide to leave the country to pursue his specialty abroad, and thus escape the daily pressure and insults." They describe actions contrary to ethics and not conducive to allowing students to follow their training to the required standards.

They state that the testimonies collected all point in the same direction and reveal facts of physical, psychological abuse and persecution suffered by young students, residents or interns. The deceased’s colleagues denounce the "terrible silence of the parties concerned to reveal the results of the investigation and the circumstances of this tragic incident".

Determined to go to the end of this case, the two commissions renew their compassion and solidarity with the victim’s family and insist on the urgency of banning "all systematic degrading and discriminatory methods which, for some, lead to serious and dangerous psychological and physical complications".

It is therefore to denounce all these abuses that the two commissions have announced the holding of a sit-in this Wednesday, September 7, in all the university hospitals of the Kingdom, calling on students and resident and intern doctors to wear black badges the same day as a sign of protest. They also say they have "urgently" seized the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Higher Education, and all other authorities responsible for medical students in order to intervene urgently so that such situations do not recur in the future.