OPINION:The health sector rot and deceit, people are suffering

From late last year, the country has been treated to unending drama by the Ministry of Health and the healthcare fraternity.

First, it was the nurses to go on strike then the industrial action by doctors that paralysed public healthcare for over three months and now the nurses are back on the streets.

This situation is untenable and can no longer be allowed to continue. Cumulatively in the last six months, the healthcare workers have spent more time on the streets than in hospitals engaged in a quarrel with the Government that most Kenyans cannot even begin to fathom, based on the many other issues that press them.

The Government prides itself in having invested millions of shillings in public healthcare in the past five years in its campaign messages but of what value are such millions if the workers continue to avoid the hospitals?

One must wonder whether the Government is unable or unwilling to resolve this conflict. It is immoral for the Government to either directly or through the Council of Governors sign collective bargaining agreements that it has no intentions of honouring.

That amounts to deceit. This is not to mean that the strikes are necessarily justified or that the demands by nurses and doctors are realistic. But let’s separate the facts from fiction; the Government is the boss here. It cannot feign helplessness.

We look up to the Government for quality healthcare and the ministry must do whatever it takes to ensure quality healthcare for all Kenyans. Even if such a decision involves the hiring of foreign medics, so be it.

The last six months of this quarrel and hard stunts by both Government and union officials have cost a lot of lives in collateral damage and this situation must be brought to an end