In May 2019 a widely shared video discussion featuring head surgeon Dr. Begashaw Melese described Ethiopian doctors as among the least paid professionals in their field, even while carrying heavy clinical loads.
The remarks said people with little health-management training often ran the system, and that doctors had left the country for years because of low pay, weak management, and political pressure under successive governments. Protests by physicians, the speaker said, were often met with force rather than negotiation.
The clip also said that after doctors met Abiy Ahmed on 3 May 2019, officials answered demands by lecturing them about the nobility of medicine instead of fixing working conditions. The archive draft kept that claim as part of the public record of the dispute.
Kept as health and labor archive, the Begashaw Melese file dates doctor frustration in Abiy Ahmed’s early years and helps explain later shortages in public hospitals.
Sources: YouTube discussion (draft embed)