By Brian Latham

Doctors at Zimbabwe's government hospitals went on strike over pay and teachers threatened to also begin a work stoppage, union officials said.

"All doctors at all the country's referral hospitals are on strike," Amon Siveregi, chairman of the Zimbabwe Medical Doctors' Association, said in a telephone interview from the capital, Harare, today. "We are negotiating with government, but can't yet disclose our demands because of a confidentiality clause in our dealings."

Crisis in Zimbabwe, a coalition of Harare-based humanitarian organizations, described Zimbabwe's hospitals as "death halls" in a report earlier this month. It blamed poor salaries for health professionals and "acute shortages" of drugs and equipment for the problem.

The tension comes as Zimbabwe's rate of inflation hit an annual 11.2 million percent this month. Kingdom Bank, a unit of Kingdom Meikles Africa Ltd. and the country's second-biggest local lender, estimated the rate of inflation at closer to 50 million percent Aug. 18.

The strike by doctors may be followed by another by teachers, the Progressive Teachers' Union of Zimbabwe said today.

"The 448 percent increase on basic salary and the 900 percent transport-allowance increase are basically a high sounding nothing," the union's spokesman Takavafira Zhou said from Harare. "It falls far short of our demands for the equivalent of $800 U.S."