Kenyan doctors strike nationwide. Patients left unattended or turned away at public hospitals

Following a 100-day strike during which patients died from inadequate care, doctors at Kenya’s public hospitals went on strike across the country on Thursday, citing the government’s failure to carry out a number of commitments from a collective bargaining deal reached in 2017. According to the Kenya Medical Practitioners Pharmacists and Dentists Union, the government has not yet posted 1,200 medical interns, therefore they went on strike in protest to demand full medical coverage for physicians.

4,000 physicians participated in the walkout, according to Dr. Davji Bhimji, secretary-general of the KMPDU, despite a labour court injunction requesting that the union halt the walkout in order to facilitate negotiations with the government. Additionally, the union’s deputy secretary general, Dr. Dennis Miskellah, declared that they would disobey the court ruling in the same manner that the government had violated three previous court judgements to raise doctors’ base salary and restore suspended physicians.

According to Miskellah, medical interns make up 27% of the staff in Kenya’s public hospitals, and their absence causes more patients to be discharged from the hospital. Nonetheless, some medical professionals have stayed on call to make sure patients in the intensive care units don’t pass away.

In an interview with prestigious broadcaster Citizen TV, Miskellah said that some physicians were killing themselves due to stress at work, while others were having to gather money for medical care because they couldn’t afford full-scope insurance.

The impact of the strike was felt across the country with many patients left unattended or being turned away from hospitals across the East African nation.

Pauline Wanjiru said she brought her 12-year-old son for treatment on his broken leg, which had started to produce a smell, but she was turned away from a hospital in Kakamega county in Western Kenya.

In 2017, doctors at Kenya’s public hospitals held a 100-day strike – the longest ever held in the country – to demand better wages and for the government to restore the country’s dilapidated public-health facilities. They also demanded continuous training of and hiring of doctors to address a severe shortage of health professionals.

At the time, public doctors, who train for six years in university, earned a basic salary of $400-$850 a month, similar to some police officers who train for just six months.