Kenya’s Catholic bishops have appealed to the country’s doctors to end their strike that has now entered its second week.
The strike for better pay and conditions has seen thousands of doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers walk off the job since 5 December, leaving scenes of chaos as patients are stranded in hospital wards or forced to go to expensive private clinics. Nurses returned to work this week but doctors stayed away.
At the Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi, a key referral hospital, some 300 doctors remained on duty until Friday but they too have now joined the strike. Army doctors were deployed at the hospitalto cover shifts.
Meanwhile Kenyans from some parts of Trans-Nzoia, West Pokot and Turkana counties crossed the border to neighbouring Uganda to seek medical services.
Doctors operating in Nakuru and Naivasha attended to victims of a horrific accident there on Saturday night, but insisted the strike was continuing. A truck carrying inflammable substances rammed into several vehicles before bursting into flames near Karai on the Nairobi-Naivasha Highway, claiming 39 lives with scores injured. “As union officials we have been on phones mobilising our colleagues around Naivasha to respond to the emergency and offer their services to the casualties. This does not mean the doctors strike is over,” said Dr Ouma Oluga, the Secretary General of Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union (KMPPDU).
The Catholic bishops argued that the misery caused by the strike was unacceptable. “We the Catholic Bishops of Kenya express our deep concern over the ongoing strike that has caused the Kenyan citizens pain, misery and suffering of unimaginable proportions.
“Helpless, sick and frail people, children and the elderly including premature babies and accident victims have been abandoned to suffer and die in horrifying conditions while medical professionals and Government officials engage in grandstanding with no clear direction or hope,” the bishops said last week.
"While the Church empathises with the medical professionals on their disappointments with the Government over the unhonoured collective bargaining agreement, it is unfair for them to abandon innocent patients to such suffering”, they added.
Unions are demanding a 300 per cent pay rise for doctors and 25 to 40 per cent pay rises for nurses that they say was agreed in the 2013 collective bargaining agreement, but has yet to be implemented.
If implemented, under the agreement the lowest paid doctor would pocket 340,000 Kenyan shillings (£2,700) per month and the highest 946,000 shillings (£7,300) per month. Currently the highest physician’s monthly salary is 328,000 shillings (£2,500) while the lowest is 130,000 shillings (£1,000).
The strike has affected all 47 counties in Kenya, leaving only private hospitals, including Catholic hospitals, in operation.
Loading ...
