Doctors’ despair drives Kenya’s medical strike
Public hospitals lack basic medicines, while private ones are the best in the continent
The first patient Cynthia Waliaula lost was a baby who stopped breathing while she carried him in her arms through the hospital, desperately trying to find an oxygen tank.
Barely out of medical school, the bright-eyed young doctor quickly learned that many of the techniques she had spent five years studying meant nothing in a world where there was neither equipment nor drugs.
Waliaula, 25, is one of thousands of Kenyan public sector doctors currently engaged in the country’s longest-ever medical strike which has dragged on for the last month and a half, demanding a tripling of salaries and better working conditions.
She said the three-month-old baby who died in her arms had pneumonia and was malnourished, but could easily have been saved with the right treatment. However, at the time, her hospital in the central Kenyan town of Isiolo had only two oxygen tanks.
Waliaula’s harrowing tales of working without even basic drugs, such as penicillin, are not isolated cases in the public sector. Meanwhile, Kenya’s private hospitals — unaffordable to much of the population — are some of the best on the continent. This week Kenyan doctors took to Twitter in a bid to explain why they are digging their heels in while public hospitals are paralysed by the strike, and why they refused a 40-percent pay rise offer.
Under the hashtag #MyBadDoctorExperience, the medics recounted experiences of being forced to work without drugs, gloves or electricity and under severe staff shortages that left many on the verge of collapse. One Twitter user, a doctor who gave only his first name, Anthony, told AFP he had once been in the middle of a caesarean section when the lights went out. “The backup generator was out of fuel. We ended up using a Nokia phone flashlight (as the) torch available had expired batteries.”
At the root of the doctors’ strike is a Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) agreed between government and the unions in 2013. The CBA also promises doctors continued training, a research fund, proper equipment and support staff. It additionally caps working hours at 40 hours a week and provides for overtime.
Poor salaries and working conditions have pushed Kenyan doctors to flee the public sector or go to other countries where there are better opportunities.
Kenya’s main doctors’ union, KMPDU, says Kenya has one doctor to 17,000 patients, while the World Health Organisation recommends one to 1,000.