When doctors down their tools for a week for money, it’s high time we look deep into our core values

Growing up in my formative years, I wanted to become a doctor, a surgeon to be precise. It was a dream that had been nurtured by the books I had read then and the perceptions I had of what it meant to be a doctor. The high cut-off points required to make it to the esteemed profession thwarted my dreams though. I narrowly missed the cut-off and settled for another course.

Looking back today, I understand where much of my motivation to pursue the career had come from. It was from a certain motivational book that was much advocated for in my high school years. The book by Ben Carson was telling of how he had moved from being a non-performing kid to a wunderkind who excelled in everything. At the end Carson ended up being a very successful neuro-surgeon. I wanted to replicate such a story. Then there was the incessant urging of teachers that we become doctors as they made very good salaries. So it wasn’t principle, neither liking that would have led me to the profession of 'Hippocrates. '

It was in high school too that I encountered the critical writing of E. Kezilahabi in Swahili literature. Kezilahabi denouncing the high level of corruption and mediocrity in Tanzania of 1970s wrote a satirical short story with the title Mayai waziri wa maradhi. The title roughly translates to Mayai, minister of diseases. In the story, Mayai, a corrupt minister is depicted to have been heading a ministry of diseases; a ministry in charge of causing diseases, suffering and death. When doctors in the narrative went on a strike, the minister was called to address them, but he refused to respond to their plea. Reason, his ministry was charged with causing diseases, sufferings and death. What a satire? But that wasn’t a surprise as the minister was serving in a cabinet which had ministries such as that of elimu na mchakamchaka, that is, ministry of education and comic.

In the face of the ongoing doctors’ strike and my memories from E. Kezilahabi story, I concur that sometimes fiction tells the real story. More sadly the truth that in Kenya we have the waziri wa maradhi and madaktari wa maradhi. Yes, doctors who cause diseases, suffering and deaths. When doctors go on a strike when demanding for a 300% salary increment, refuse to come to the negotiating table for flimsy reasons, we have every reason to worry. First, doctors are highly specialized workers, their training taking years, almost double the period that normal undergraduates take in the university. Their studies are fully funded by the government from public coffers, which goes to the tune of millions per student. From the vantage point of their training, specialization and the cost it takes to train a single doctor, they are placed at a position to hold the government at limbo and arm-twist it to their liking. Doctors are therefore guided by a code of ethics that they should at all times adhere to before they deal with matters of life and death. When doctors forfeit that code and exploit the plight of poor citizens while pushing for their gain, then they cease to be healing doctors and turn to killing doctors.

Am I then saying that doctor’s welfare, working conditions and other issues affecting them as workers of the state shouldn’t be looked into? Absolutely, I’m not. To illustrate my point, I will tell of an event as told by Francis Collins, the former director of the Human Genome Project. Collins in the summer of 1989 had travelled to Nigeria from USA where he was based then to volunteer in a small mission hospital, in order to provide an opportunity for the missionary physicians to attend their annual conference and recharge their spiritual and physical batteries. While on duty, a young man was brought who was suffering from paradoxical pulse, a condition characterized by progressive weakness and massive swelling of legs. The pulse disappears every time the patient takes a breath. This meant that the young man had accumulated a large amount of fluid in the pericardial sac around his heart. This fluid was threatening to choke off his circulation and take his life. He had at most a few days to live unless something drastic was done. The only chance to save him was to carry out a highly risky procedure of drawing off the pericardial fluid with a large bore needle placed in his chest. In the developed world, such a procedure would be done only by a highly trained interventional cardiologist, guided by an ultrasound machine, in order to avoid lacerating the heart and causing immediate death.

No ultrasound was available. No other physician present in this small Nigerian hospital had ever undertaken such a procedure. The choice was for Collins to attempt a highly risky and invasive needle aspiration or watch the farmer die. He explained the situation to the young man, who was then fully aware of his own precarious state. The young man calmly urged him to proceed. To cut the long story short, the operation was successful and the young man regained his life. Now tell me, how much was that young man to pay back to the doctor who had given back his life to him? Probably his soul. 

The profession of a doctor is a calling. The patients that the doctors treat cannot pay in money the services that are rendered to them; neither can their government pay for them. We can only appreciate the doctors by the little tokens we give them. The doctors themselves must also watch over their organizations unions to see that they are not taken over by politicians cum doctors who haven’t the least respect for the code of ethics that doctors abide by. When doctors take to the streets shouting that they are striking because MCA’s are paid more than they earn, then something is seriously wrong somewhere.