It is a litmus test for the health sector over the ongoing perennial industrial unrest.
According to findings, some 4,000 public sector doctors are on strike, with the Kenya Medical Practitioners Pharmacists Dentists Union having roughly 9,000 registered doctors. Existing findings establishes that in 2013, counties had 874 doctors, 6,620 nurses.
By 2016, 1,302 doctors and 8,903 nurses in the facilities compared to current where there are 4,398 doctors and 31,923 nurses in health facilities.
The 2017 CBA shows an intern is paid about Sh206,000 and lowest paid junior doctor earns a maximum Sh291,000, with the highest paid doctor earning about Sh512,000 every month.
There are cries and urgent calls by all Kenyans, including patients, religious figures and opposition leaders on urgent need for the government to re-open negotiations with the doctors and have the hospitals back running.
The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) expresses deep concern that the ongoing doctors’ strike has and will continue to have direct impact on the provision of healthcare in Kenya.
They urge the state to take primary responsibility of ensuring that Kenyans enjoy their rights (including the right to healthcare) as provided for under the Constitution and international human rights.
Biting health workers' unrest amid suffering poor patients gravely missing medical services calls the key players in the strike to dialogue for things to be normal again.
This comes as Kenya’s happiness levels have dropped for the first time in five years; an analysis based on a newly released survey shows.
The annual World Happiness Report 2024 edition ranks Kenya at position 114 out of 143 surveyed countries, having dropped three places from 111 in last year’s report.
This comes amid citizens' frustrations over increased taxation by the government, a thinning payslip for the working class and sky-high prices of household commodities.
Deductions to the National Social Security Fund rose five-fold after a landmark ruling that upheld the 2013 NSSF Act and the Finance Act of 2023 would later add salt to injury with the imposition of the housing levy, set at 1.5 per cent of gross salaries and payable by both the employee and the employer.
Incumbent standoff between the medics and other players characterised in cessation of threats and intimidation against lawful exercise to demonstrate occasioned or fuelled by pending 2017 CBA can only see futuristic precious lives of poor and innocent Kenyans threatened.
The hardline stances taken from either side as patients and world watches the drama is not the ideal way to go. The medics' genuine demands for the posting of interns, payment of fees for doctors on postgraduate training, extension of contracts for UHC staff, payment of arrears of basic salaries as per the 2017 CBA and provision of comprehensive medical insurance calls for urgent and amicable solution.
Benefit of doubt that honouring the deal will prompt the government to raise basic salaries across all civil servants including teachers, which requires additional allocation of resources to all counties does not add up.
While governors threaten to pull out of talks as section of them have threatened to sack the doctors, a case in point is a one public hospital in Nairobi was reportedly laying off more than 100 doctors for taking part in the strike is not the way to go but likely add more harm than good to poor patients.
The governors’ theatrical narrative to the medics' question raises more queries than answers on their commitment in finding a lasting solution.
Indecision by key players to fix the ongoing strike, which requires both parties to embrace urgent genuine discussions on a return-to-work formula is tantamount to planning to fail.
For a quick resumption of ordinary provision of healthcare services thus averting more disruption of health services across the land, which has impacted negatively on ordinary Kenyans lately with reported cases of deaths, it is imperative to act fast.
The writer is based in Nairobi