Doctors' union pushes for health commission and CBAs

Kenya Medical Practitioners Pharmacists Dentists Union has renewed the push to have a Health Service Commission established to tackle all human resource issues in the health sector.

The union said it wants President William Ruto’s administration to prioritise issues in the sector to achieve universal healthcare for Kenyans.

KMPDU called for a meeting with Health Cabinet Secretary Susan Wafula and the Council of Governors to discuss how best to resolve the critical issues affecting smooth delivery of healthcare.

KMPDU North Rift branch officials Dr Kamunzi Mule (secretary) and Dr Darwin Ambuka said Wafula should extensively use dialogue with other stakeholders if she wishes to run the docket smoothly.

Dr Mule and Dr Ambuka said the KMPDU was ready to dialogue with counties and national government on the way forward for the health sector.

KMPDU said all counties must move quickly to sign Collective Bargaining Agreements with unions representing health workers to avoid frequent and disruptive strikes.

However, they insist that a health service commission would be able to deal with most of the issues affecting medics.

“As a union, our interest is quality healthcare for all Kenyans and we can only achieve that if we work together as stakeholders to deal with critical issues affecting smooth delivery of health services,” Dr Mule said.

Speaking in Eldoret, the officials said shortage of health personnel in counties was also another major issue that must be quickly addressed by Ruto’s administration.

The union is up in arms over an acute shortage of doctors in the North Rift counties and other parts of the country.

Dr Mule and Dr Ambuka expressed concern that the shortage of doctors was adversely affecting medical services at hospitals in the region.

The country has more than 5,000 unemployed doctors and they want to ensure the all hospitals have capacity, including enough medical personnel to serve Kenyans effectively.

“We have a burning shortage of doctors in this country but the situation is worse in North Rift counties,” Dr Mule said, adding that almost all counties are facing a serious shortage of experts.

The officials said West Pokot county, for example has 38 doctors serving a population of more than 621,000 people, meaning the doctor-population ratio stands at 1 to 17,000, which is way too far from the World Health Organisation standard of 1 to 1,000.

“The deficit cuts across all counties in the region and the figures are shocking and unacceptable. We therefore need to absorb all trained doctors in the country and also train more,” Dr Mule said.

The KPMDU officials accused Ministry of Health of failing in its mandate of ensuring that adequate specialists are trained for health facilities.

They said, while the Health ministry has been claiming that Kenya has enough gynaecologists, a county like West Pokot had only one gynaecologist and no anaesthesiologist.

Turkana has only two gynaecologists, no Ear, Nose and Throat surgeon and no radiologist.

The country is struggling with one of the highest maternal mortality rates at of 342 per 10,000, which the KMPDU said is far above the recommended rate of as per UN Sustainable Development Goals of 70 to 100,000 live births.

The KMPDU officials said that most of the challenges in the health sector are as a result of poor policies, priorities and underfunding.

Kenya, they said, was a signatory of the Abuja Declaration of 2001 where 189 heads of state pledged to allocate at least 15 per cent of their annual budgets to healthcare.

Dr Mule said, while nations like Rwanda had implemented the declaration, Kenya was still at about five per cent.

The officials said it was not possible for the country to achieve UHC without provision of adequate resources to the health sector.

(edited by Amol Awuor)