Shape up or face the sack - Waiguru warns medical practitioners

Medical practitioners in all public health facilities have been ordered to close down their private clinics or face the sack.

Governor Anne Waiguru has also directed pharmacists in public hospitals to work on 24-hour shift, to ensure patients are not referred to private chemists to buy medicine yet drugs are available in all the public hospitals.

Ms Waiguru while issuing the directive wondered why some health workers in the county were running private businesses yet they were full-time employees in public hospitals.

The governor was speaking at Kianyaga sub-county hospital yesterday where she made an impromptu visit following hue and cry from Gichugu residents that they were being forced to buy drugs from private chemists.

Buy drugs

Speaking at Kiburia Girls High School during a public participation forum on her proposed 15-year development plan, the governor expressed shock that patients were still being referred to chemists yet all hospitals were well supplied with drugs.

She had been informed by a resident from Karumandi Ward how on Monday she went to the health facility and was told to go and buy drugs worth Sh2,000 which she did not have.

But on checking, Waiguru was informed by Kianyaga sub-county hospital in charge Dr Jackline Munene that although drugs were available, there was a shortage of pharmacists at the facility.