He insisted that his hospital does not recognise the strike since it doesn’t have any agreement with the Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union, which called for the action.
In Mbagathi District Hospital, patients were being attended to by nurses, who often receive guidance from doctors.
“Services are not optimum. We hope that the strike will be resolved quickly before we begin to see deaths. It is difficult for nurses to work without the direction of doctors,” said a nurse who didn’t want to be named.
Thursday the striking doctors met at KNH grounds where they staged demonstrations against the Government for “ignoring their offers for negotiations to resolve the matter”.
The doctors are organising themselves mainly through Facebook and Twitter accounts where they share information and ideas on how to make their strike a success.
“KMPPDU has barked. If we don’t bite hard, they will know that we are toothless. Next time we bark, they will chase us away with contempt for ‘making noise’. This is the moment, this is the time to consolidate our collective might,” said a doctor on the KMPPDU Facebook page.
But Medical Services Minister Anyang’ Nyong’o continued to dig in Thursday, saying the Government does not recognise the strike and blamed doctors for abandoning their work on “flimsy grounds”.
As doctors went on a nationwide strike Thursday, Hassan Bakari, who is nursing a patient at the Coast Provincial General Hospital in Mombasa, was a worried man.
He had made the journey across the Likoni ferry to Coast Provincial General Hospital to seek medical treatment for his ailing mother.
Bakari was among scores of patients who arrived at the hospital early morning but had not been attended to.
Medical services at the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital (MTRH) were also paralysed when doctors failed to report to their workstations.
“It is quite unfortunate for this government to ignore doctors until we resort to this strike,” said Dr Richard Mogeni, the North Rift KMPPDU branch secretary.
