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Medics strike in Kenya, we are too much in denial

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I always feel bad when professionals who provide critical services like doctors and teachers down their tools in protest. Of course, this extends to all other critical services for the country. When Doctors feel aggrieved and stay away from the work the consequences are quite severe. These strikes are just symptoms of the troubled society that Kenya is. We have and some disruptive teachers strike earlier on. We have seen others including University lecturers threatening to strike. In civil service, there have been muted strikes as well.I don’t think going by what we have seen in Kenya greed is the driving force behind these strikes. It is not. In a country where graft has been endemic for eons you can be sure so much have gone wrong and there is plenty of seismic structural problems as a result. With this realization of graft contributing to the challenges we face as a nation plus the high cost of living it was simply a matter of time that these would erupt in form of strikes. After all we are much aware of people whose contribution to the nation is questionable in terms of progress yet are some of the biggest beneficiaries of goodies here and there. In an era of knowledge and the spread of it that fast expect trouble. You can fool some people all the time but cannot fool all the people all the time. This is the mantra applicable to Kenya.Unfortunately, innocent Kenyans and poor Kenyans who need these essential services are suffering in the cross-fire of disputes, accusations, and counter accusations. The grass is being hurt by the jumbos fight. The tragedy is that in a nation the masses hardly get to realize what ills them till they sink into a pit. This is part of the challenge bedeviling our nation. To give an analogy, before Fred Matiang’i the CS for education came with his sweeping broom you would have easily been convinced that all is very well with the Education sector. You would think that cries that the examinations were being manipulated with a lot of leakage and cheating was the mere sour graping or cries of losers. It was not. Similarly, there are deep problems in the health sector.For a long time, access to top medical facilities has been a preserve of the rich or the well to do in the society. Indeed those facilities are still accessible by those with good medical insurance cover and the rich particularly. Reforms in the health sector have been slow though there has been some progress in the coverage of the National Health Insurance Fund(NHIF), reforms in the civil servant medical coverage in hospitals and lately the teachers and police have seen some development in this area. However, there are still numerous problems even on the handling of all these. More reforms are needed and the many challenges ironed out. But NHIF has progressively been reformed to get more people access better medical care. Those reforms need to progressively get better. There is still huge room for improvement. Bit generally speaking the medical sector is chaotic.But on matters medical personnel remuneration, a problem persists. I have been reviewing data on how other jurisdictions albeit richer than Kenya caters for these professionals and there is a lot to improve for Kenya. I have checked the same data for teachers and there is a lot to improve as well. The challenge is if we don’t cater for our medics for instance, the immigration will only intensify and thus lose more. I was convinced we were working to make Kenya medical care get into the league of India so as we could enjoy tourism in this area as well, till I read a lot about the current strike. Bottom-line is we have to sort out the mess. Reforms are needed and we also have to get very tough on corruption bedeviling this nation. It is the cause of all this mess. That is why we hardly have enough neither for our professionals nor for our many needs.THE WRITER IS A RESEARCHER AND CONSULTANT

Nairobi.

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