Why medics in Kenya deserve better pay

A patient sleeps on the floor in Nyangito ward of Kisii Teaching and Referral Hospital in this photos taken on 5th Dec 2016. Most patients have been forced to seek services in private hospital and those who don't have the financial muscle are sleeping helpless in their hospital beds. [PHOTOS SAMMY OMINGO/STANDARD]

When I was a child my family lived in Kikuyu. My father is a vet who at that time worked for the Government.

We lived in a Government house in a Government commune. I went to school there. Played with my friends there. Went to the doctor there.

The doctor worked out of a Government dispensary.

He might have been a clinical officer, I can’t be sure now, but he wore a white coat and gave injections, which I do not remember with much fondness.

Nonetheless, he treated most of my childhood ailments.

It wasn’t an in-patient clinic so if anyone fell critically ill, they had to be rushed to town (Nairobi) where they would most likely be admitted to Kenyatta Hospital (another Government facility).

Other than that, whenever we were under the weather, all paths led to our friendly neighbourhood dispensary.

You didn’t even have to drive there; it was that close, that convenient and pretty damn efficient.

Fast forward a few decades and there’s a Nairobi City County clinic in my new neighbourhood. It used to be a little run-down.

Looked a bit decrepit. But then a few years ago (back in the days of the Kibaki/Raila administration, when the fires of the revolution were still burning and Charity Ngilu was on a mission to bring affordable health care to the people) it got a facelift, put up a brand new ‘free maternity services’ sign and began to send word out every so often that there was a free vaccination drive for children.

This Nairobi City County clinic is right in the heart of my hood, literally a stone’s through away from my house. Despite that convenience, when my daughter was younger I would insist on taking her to a private hospital for her shots because the hospital was selling ‘baby-friendly’ vaccines (billed as not causing as much discomfort to children as ‘normal’ vaccines) and charging parents a spleen and a kidney for the privilege.

But then I found out that for the most part, kiddie vaccines in Kenya are standardised Government-issue (no matter who dispenses them), and the GOK has not been in the business of issuing harmful vaccines, or stealing monies meant to support free vaccination programmes - well, not until recently.

We have come to learn that for this administration, nothing is sacred, least of all the lives of women and their children. But I digress.

The point is, while there are some kinks in the system, we have a public healthcare machine that is churning out services to a majority of Kenyans, most of whom live their lives without the safety net of private medical insurance.

The machine is supported by doctors, nurses, clinical officers, orderlies, cleaners, caterers etcetera – many who go above and beyond the call of duty to care for patients, whether they are helping them to deliver children, guiding them through a healing process or keeping them comfortable in the final stages of terminal illness.

It is very often a thankless job despite the fact that these people, on many occasions, literally hold our lives in their hands. When all is said and done, there is no higher calling than to be a healer.

But despite the critical role doctors, nurses et al play in keeping the nation healthy and on its feet, the State refuses to recognise that invaluable contribution.

It refuses to pay these professionals a wage that is commensurate with the skill, expertise and often selfless care that they bring to the table. Meanwhile, this administration is bleeding cash from the jugular.

As a people, we are growing weaker and weaker while the parasites we elected into office gorge themselves on our blood. They would rather watch us die than lessen their loot for the benefit of those who would heal us.

We realise that our problems start and end with us when one woman can cart billions of tax shillings out of a bank in a gunia, but the Government is unwilling to honour a negotiated pay-rise agreement for a section of the work force that more than 40 million Kenyans depend on for their well-being.

And so we find ourselves living in a time when every man, woman and child ought to stand up, not just on behalf of the medical fraternity, but in their own right, to demand that the Government fulfils its contract with the Kenyan people.

That our so-called leaders – the people we trusted with our lives and those of our children - stop the blood-letting and begin the healing process.

That the long hand of the State pulls out of the cookie jar so that it can focus on paying workers their dues and putting our tax shillings to legitimate use.

When doctors go on strike, it immediately becomes a matter of life and death.

Therefore, it is time for every right thinking Kenyan to put their tools down and their hands up; to look straight down the barrel of that government-issue weapon of mass impoverisation and say: “Don’t loot!”