The nationwide doctors’ strike is a gigantic problem for the
national government and the 47 county administrations.
And its optics are a blot on all of them, particularly the ruling
Jubilee Party at precisely the point it wants to begin telling the good news
story of its four years in power, ahead of the general election in eight months.
The doctors’ Hippocratic Oath is being broken daily as patients
are turned away from hospitals and left to their own devices. The mass escape
of inmates from the Mathari Mental Hospital is no picture of progress by any
measure.
Social media are ablaze with calls for President Uhuru
Kenyatta to do something, anything. Something must indeed be done.
The doctors have to contend with 48 regimes and need a
centralised managerial and administrative body like the Teacher’s Service
Commission.
The Medical Services Commission should be created.
This national tragedy should be treated like the state of
emergency that it really is.
