Looming health crisis as KMPDU maintains doctors' strike still on
Health & Science
By
Maryann Muganda
| Mar 12, 2024
A crisis is looming in the health sector as The Kenya Medical Practitioners Dentists Union maintains that the national doctors' strike announced to kick off on Wednesday is still on.
The doctors are demanding a mandatory medical internship posting for over 4,000 medical graduates.
The Ministry of Health stated that the deployment of the current batch of medics will require Sh4.9 billion with each intern earning 206,000 shillings per month, which it says it cannot afford.
"The strike begins on Wednesday night, and the strike notice expires on Wednesday midnight at 11:59pm, when we wake up on Thursday there will be no doctors in the hospital," said Dr Dennis Miskellah.
In an interview on Spice FM's The Situation Room, Dr Miskellah said the union has no option but to resort to the strike to pile pressure on the government for its alleged failure to address doctors' grievances.
"Strike is not about broken negotiation, strike is about the beginning of negotiation if somebody can call you to negotiate and does throw away that goodwill," he said.
Miskellah said the union has exhausted all other available options after recent negotiation meetings with the Ministry of Health failed to yield results.
"We have no choice but to resort to industrial action since the government did not resolve our issues," he stated.
The Secretary-General also criticised the Ministry's handling of the dispute, claiming a lack of leadership and clarity on who has the final decision-making authority.
"It is very frustrating to engage with people who are all over the place," he added.
He cited one meeting last week where the Cabinet Secretary publicly addressed the media without briefings from the union's representatives on what had been discussed internally.
Miskellah also voiced frustrations, alleging that the Health Principal Secretary and Cabinet Secretary have called separate meetings on the same issues, calling it "confusing and incompetent."
The strike centers on the union's grievances over Kenya's "broken healthcare system" which they say has led to deaths of patients and medical staff that can be prevented.
"We are tired of seeing our doctors die from a broken healthcare system," Miskellah stated.