Yet another doctors’ strike in Kenya, in its second month despite the courts’ intervention, has caught patients, majority of whom are poor and heavily dependent on public healthcare facilities, in the middle.
The strike has reportedly led to a spike in patient deaths due to lack of doctors in the public hospitals. I do not believe it is morally right to allow patients to die simply because the government and the medical board cannot reach a settlement.
But the government should have learnt from past strikes and put in place contingency plans that are triggered at such moments to ensure healthcare is uninterrupted.
In any case, the strike is preceded by a notice to the government, whose responsibility it is to ensure public hospitals run regardless of a strike by medics. I wonder, then, who is to be held accountable for the preventable deaths during doctors’ strike?
The doctors’ Hippocratic Oath is anchored in saving lives. That is their core mandate. However, they cannot be expected to run hospitals while their rights are impinged upon. The welfare of doctors in this country has never been a priority, despite having a weak healthcare system compared to developed countries.
The county governments too, do not seem to care or prioritise employment of enough doctors and nurses in their areas. This is a World Health Organization (WHO) requirement to ensure the recommended ratio of doctor to patient is met.
Kenya has failed in this regard, and terribly so. Instead, as I mentioned previously, their preference is to encourage brain drain in the health sector by exporting medical personnel. This continues despite the disquiet in the country and the shortage of medical personnel in public hospitals.
I have wondered whether, like the other Kenyans being exported as labour abroad, medical brain drain by the government is a money-making scheme by some officials.
Paying doctors, interns included, what is commensurate to their work at market rate is the responsibility of the government. To ensure public hospitals achieve the universal health coverage (UHC) target is the responsibility of the government too. They introduced the term anyway. Hence, they must walk the talk by supporting the doctors and the health sector in general for Kenya to excel at provision of UHC.
The regrettable and confusing aspect of the situation is that, the same government is frustrating doctors and any efforts to create the very policy they came up with, UHC.
Clients of private hospitals
The other confusing and hypocritical aspect of the whole saga is that the officials unwilling to pay doctors the agreed salaries as agreed in the 2017 collective bargaining agreement (CBA) or even meet them half-way are clients of the private hospitals. They can afford to fly out so as to get themselves the best healthcare.
These are not people with moral or ethical right to deal with the doctors’ welfare. They are yapping and threatening doctors for selfish political reasons and nothing more. They have never tried to walk in the shoes of poor patients, whose only hope of getting healthcare is in public hospitals stripped of essential services now worsened by the strike.
The ongoing chaos in the health sector should squarely be blamed on the government. Apart from failing to fund the health sector and even insurance contributions being left to thieves, they have also failed the patients by allowing corruption to go on unabatedly in the sector. Afya House became “Mafia house” decades ago and nothing has been done since to reverse that. Kenyans make insurance contributions; the least they deserve is a tone-deaf government to their plight and poorly funded and managed hospitals.
The culture of allowing Kenyans to die needlessly because the government only wants to help when it suits its political whims needs to end. We must inculcate a culture of accountability in key sectors such as healthcare. That should start with holding people responsible for failures and deaths before, during and after a doctors’ strike. Patients should never be the bargaining chip in politics.
What have children done to die because the government is unwilling to negotiate favourably with doctors, and in good time, to avoid deaths of, especially, the vulnerable? The poor bear the brunt of egotism and agreed perpetuated by the government. It is inconceivable that it cannot pay doctors well citing lack of money but set billions of shillings aside to appoint people to illegal positions of CASs.
If the CASs are being forcibly employed to lay the ground for a political return in 2027 and beyond, then they have got it all wrong. Voters are the patients being neglected and I would rather spend the money to appease them. Success in the health sector will have a positive impact on other sectors and, more so, the economy. Failures in the sector are impoverishing families with sick relatives.
Accountability for patient deaths during the strike and failures in the health sector are the government’s; we must turn our wrath on officials, not doctors.
