I welcome the agreement reached between MAM and the government regarding salaries and working conditions of doctors. I certainly welcome this agreement as a doctor myself but even more so as a woman and mother of young children.

It certainly will facilitate life for doctors who until now were finding it very difficult to combine working with family life and with what is a must for young doctors - training.

A very positive aspect of this agreement, apart from the substantial increase in salaries and allowances, is that doctors will be given four hours a week to dedicate for training. As we all recall, before this agreement training was wholly in the care of the newly graduated doctor who not only had to fund his own post-graduate training but had to take much of his own personal leave to find time to attend post-graduate lectures and examinations often held outside his own country.

This agreement then, for the first time in the history of the medical profession, formally acknowledges the need for designated time for training for all doctors who are trying to keep abreast of the fast developments in the field of medicine.