Kenya doctor strike: The public caught between the medics and the government
NAIROBI - Most of the beds at the labour ward of Kihara Level 4 Hospital on the outskirts of the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, are empty.
Only three are occupied out of more than a dozen.
A nurse says the hospital is not taking in women who need a Caesarean as there is no doctor to perform the operation.
The doctors here - and across the country - have been on strike for about a month now.
Public hospitals are virtually empty. There is an unsettling silence in places normally brimming with people seeking a host of critical services.
Patients are now forced to go to expensive private hospitals or delay treatment, resulting in worsening chronic illnesses and sometimes deaths.
Doctors are striking over a number of issues, including pay and the failure to hire trainee doctors, who cannot qualify without getting an intern position.
The medics are aware of the problems the strike is causing but argue that industrial action is necessary “to help the public get quality health care” in the long run, as their working conditions and the lack of equipment mean they cannot treat patients properly, says Davji Bhimji, the secretarygeneral of the doctors’ union, KMPDU.
“Sometimes we are just there to supervise death,” he tells the BBC.
President William Ruto has asked the striking doctors to return to work and agree to the offer that the government has made, saying the country must “live according to our means”.
Many who have had to rely on the public health service are sympathetic as they have seen the problems for themselves, but that sympathy is being tested.
One woman tells the BBC that her sisterin-law, who was in labour and needed an operation, lost her unborn child because of the strike.
The patient had travelled from western Kenya, where she could not get treatment, to the main referral hospital in Nairobi, but was turned away.
She was eventually taken to a private hospital but it was too late to save her baby.
Lucy Bright Mbugua, 26, says her 10-month-old baby has been at the Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi since January.
Her baby is being treated for a condition that requires constant attention but only a few doctors are available. They now come around twice a week rather than daily.
“It’s painful when there is no service. The baby is suffering and there are no drugs,” she tells the BBC.
Her mother, Anne, says she often spends nights at the outpatient centre so that she is available for her daughter, and to save on transport costs.
The peasant farmer, who came to Nairobi from her rural home 200km (125 miles) away after her grandchild got sick, says she is trying to help her daughter financially but it is very difficult.
“Why can’t they sit down and agree,” she says of the striking doctors and the government, adding that “we, the small fish, are really suffering” - a view echoed by many.
A pastor in Kibera, one of the biggest slums in Nairobi, says he has been seeing about five sick people a week.
“You know that they require to be seen by doctors, but if there is no treatment, you offer prayers so that they stop having other thoughts or give up hope,” Pastor Stephen Genda tells the BBC.
The problems have now been compounded as clinical officers have joined the strike.
They provide outpatient services and constitute the backbone of healthcare, especially in rural areas. But they have vowed not to budge until their demands are met.
“The government is not going to give anything without a fight,” says Peterson Wachira, the chairman of the Kenya Union of Clinical Officers.