End the suffering of abandoned Covid staff

Health professionals who risked their lives and made great contributions when the country was weighed down by the Covid-19 pandemic are being treated badly. In fact, callously – with the proverbial gratitude of a donkey’s kick from the officialdom.

These are the people the government has forgotten after they daringly served patients in hospitals at the peak of the infections.

They may have been carrying out their duties in the true spirit of their training, but they were also human and some even contracted the disease and died. Others soldiered on until the wave of infections was rolled back.

Instead of getting accolades for their stellar work during the campaign against the worst health scourge since the Spanish Influenza more than a century earlier, they have been literally abandoned by their employer.

Thousands of these health workers have gone without pay for months, being tossed between the national and county government offices. The officials seem to have forgotten that should there be a resurgence of the killer disease, they would need these well-trained and experienced people back to fight it again. Having built up such a credible capacity, it is foolish of health authorities to just turn their back on this valuable group.

Among the 18,500 workers, including doctors and nurses, the Ministry of Health recruited and deployed to the 47 counties three years ago under the universal healthcare programme, are desperate people, some of whom are contemplating suicide. They cannot feed themselves and their families, including elderly parents, who sacrificed a lot to pay for them to acquire those skills.

The health workers have sent an impassioned appeal to President William Ruto over their salaries.

This is a blot on the commemoration of 10 years of county governance, with health as one of the key devolved functions.

The professionals are being treated with contempt and yet the country still has an acute shortage of health workers.

County and national governments should quickly resolve the crisis to end the medics’ suffering and revamp public health services.