Hospitals hard hit by lecturers strike

Key services in county and referral hospitals across the country have been affected by the lecturers' strike, which enters its 74th day today.

According to Ouma Oluga, the secretary-general of the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Union (KMPDU), 85 per cent of services offered at referral hospitals were done by registrars.

"Interns, who form 25 per cent of the workforce in county hospitals, are absent because medical students have not completed the exams that allow them to become interns," added Dr Oluga.

Owing to the reduced workforce, Oluga said last Friday that patients visiting public hospitals were at risk of getting substandard services or failing to obtain treatment entirely.

Oluga said Kenyatta National Hospital was now offering emergency services alone, making patients with non-urgent cases wait.

The stalemate

However, KMPDU and the Universities Academic Staff Union (UASU) have vowed to carry on with the strike.

"We have resolved that the strike must continue because our demands have not been met," said George Omondi, the secretary general of the University of Nairobi's UASU Chapter.

In addition to a counter-offer to their 2017-2021 collective bargaining agreement, UASU and KMPDU have demanded the payment of clinical allowances to teaching staff, whom they said had not received the money for 17 months despite performing the same tasks as doctors. The unions also demanded better working conditions for doctors and teaching staff.

The unions also claimed that medical students, who are currently missing classes because of the strike, were in favour of the strike. Nairobi University medical students, however, denied the unions' claims. Instead, the students accused consultant lecturers of failing to consider their plight.