Four days of HORROR and DEATH as patients languish in abandoned wards

The nation wide doctors’ and nurses’ strike entered the fourth day Thursday, leaving only medical students and clinicians to help the sick in some selected hospitals.

In a desperate attempt to save lives, Kenya Medical Training College (KMTC) students have been called in to assist though most patients are still languishing without care.

The situation is set to become worse following the announcement by the country’s largest referral hospital – Kenyatta National Hospital – consultants that they would be downing their tools in solidarity with their colleagues.

Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union (KMPDU) Secretary General, Ouma Oluga, on Thursday, December 8, said the medical consultants from the University of Nairobi empathize with the plight of the doctors.

Oluga insisted that doctors will only return to work if the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) signed with government in 2013 is implemented, accusing government of insincerity.

On Wednesday, December 7, KMPDU threatened to paralyze services in all private and public hospitals on Tuesday, December 13 if no deal reached by Monday.

The 24-hour strike, that involves withdrawing non-emergency care, and set for Tuesday next week, will be unprecedented in the history of the country’s health industry.

This will be an escalation that is desperate and irresponsible and will inevitably impact tenfold on the patients.

Thousands of patients were on Monday turned away from hospitals while others were left stranded in their wards when the crippling strike by the medics kicked off.

Several patients have also been reported to have died as a result of lack of care in public hospitals, many of which are completely unstaffed.

Patients have been directed to private clinics that are unaffordable to the majority of the population.

Three rounds of negotiations between the medics and the government have failed with the doctors and nurses accusing the latter of insincerity.

They have demanded that the Cabinet Secretary for Health, Cleopa Mailu, and his Principal Secretary, Nicholas Muraguri, be kicked out of the negotiation team.

On Wednesday, government proposed a pay increment of between Ksh 36,000 and Ksh 42,000, a proposal the doctors rejected.

The proposal would have seen the least paid doctor, a medical intern in Job Group L receive a minimum of Ksh 176,244 and a maximum of Ksh 186,214 as gross salary while the highest paid doctor in Job Group T would receive a minimum of Ksh 450,060 and a maximum of Ksh 560,980 as gross salary.

However, the medics insist that they will settle for nothing less than the agreed 300% pay rise as indicated in the June 27, 2013 CBA that was supposed to be effected by July 1, 2013.

The medics are also pushing for recruitment of more doctors and nurses to reduce the work load and the current doctor to patient ratio that stands at 1:16,000.

In most hospitals, both urban and rural, queues in the casualty and outpatient departments thinned out as employees kept away for the fourth day running.

Even under normal circumstances, long-term patients in understaffed and over-populated wards sometimes go for weeks without seeing a doctor, and in packed emergency rooms patients can wait for hours before being attended to. During the strike, people have been forced to wait much longer for the swamped medics in private hospitals.

The doctors’ stayaway can be viewed as a grim reflection of the government’s indifference to a national health crisis and the otherwise poor salaries of civil servants.

Since 2013 when the CBA was signed, the doctors have tried to lobby government, in and out of court, but the Ministry of Health has maintained a hardliner stance failing to meet the particulars of that agreement.

During strike negotiations the ministry has driven a hard bargain and urged the doctors to return to work.

But how many more people have to die before action is taken?