Kenya is on the verge of a health catastrophe as public hospital doctors have walked off the job in protest of inadequate working conditions, the CBA’s implementation, the posting of medical interns, and health insurance.https: //www.facebook.com/aih.malawi/posts/823629856467828
Once guaranteed care, patients are now abandoned to a dehumanizing environment where medical professionals and facilities demand payment before providing care.
Physicians nationwide, including those working in private hospitals, have given the government a seven-day ultimatum to halt the industry’s mandated use of the Electronic Tax Invoice Management System (eTIMS) or risk a countrywide walkout.
This strike would worsen a dangerous situation that currently exists.
Patients will likely suffer for a very long time, based on the back and forth that has occurred over the previous seven days between the government and the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Union (KMPDU), as well as the ministries of Labor, Health, and the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC).
The union representatives visited public hospitals on Wednesday and pulled out physicians who had shown up for work.
In all of the nation’s public hospitals, physicians are not providing essential and emergency care.
Major medical facilities, including as Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH), no longer accept patients for ward admission or elective surgery admission.
Pregnant patients who were formerly admitted to Pumwani Maternity Hospital—one of Kenya’s top maternity hospitals—are now compelled to seek care elsewhere.
“Mothers who wish to give birth are flooding KNH, but there aren’t any doctors available to care for them. According to KMPDU Secretary-General Davji Atellah, “They are treating this lightly, and it will be a big deal when we start losing patients as a result of the government’s stubbornness.”
He went on to say that they would not back down from the causes they had legitimately battled for and that the strike would go on until all of their demands were satisfied.
“I am aware that our patients are suffering, but we are too. “Surely, what government would want to deny its doctors medical insurance if I can’t even receive treatment in any hospital across the nation due to financial constraints?” he questioned.
According to Dr. Atellah, cutting the wages of healthcare professionals and medical interns is a smack in the face that they will not tolerate.
“We’re going to fight this to the very end.”
“As a union, we wanted to go on strike with the least amount of hardship to people possible, but the government keeps trying to incite us. The most recent example is the SRC circular that says interns’ pay will be cut by 91%. In order to interact with the unions, we expect that the government will leave its ivory tower,” Dennis Miskellah, deputy secretary-general of the KMPDU, stated.
Mary Muthoni, the principal secretary for public health, was in court on Wednesday morning, according to Dr. Miskellah, “to prove that she is now ready to post interns and waiting for SRC to finish the exercise of salary review.”
The Ministry of Health’s budget is impacted by the issues brought up by KMPDU, according to Ms. Muthoni in an affidavit submitted to the Employment and Labour Relations Court. These issues include the implementation of the CBA, salary delays, hiring of doctors, posting of interns, postgraduate training, and promotion of doctors.
She claims that there weren’t many interns when the 2017 CBA was signed, and the ministry’s budgetary allotment was enough to pay for their compensation.
Health Principal Secretary Ms. Mary Muriuki said, “The Ministry of Health may not be able to absorb and pay all of them because it has no control over the number of students being trained within medical training institutions and therefore cannot control the number of interns requiring placement in the health facilities.”
She continues, saying that it has “greatly impeded the implementation of the CBA” since “the remuneration rates of these interns go beyond the salary structure approved by the Public Service Commission.”
Ms. Muriuki further states that the SRC authorized the rates that the Health Ministry will use when posting medical interns on April 1 and that the Ministry had requested advice on medical intern compensation rates from the SRC and National Treasury.
According to a circular with these rates, medical interns should be paid between Ksh35,000 ($264) and Ksh70,000 ($528). This is because, according KMPDU, they should be making a net income of approximately Ksh150,000 ($1,132).
For this reason, critical and emergency services, including surgeries, were discontinued in hospitals and doctors completely withdrew.
According to the circular, interns in the fields of medicine, pharmacy, and dentistry would receive stipends ranging from Ksh47,000 to Ksh70,000; nursing officers and clinical officers, on the other hand, would receive stipends ranging from Ksh35,000 to Ksh50,000 ($377). Interns with a diploma in clinical officership would be paid between Ksh27,000 ($203) and Ksh35,000.
Head of Public Service Felix Koskei has summoned doctors, involved ministries, the Council of Governors (CoG), and the SRC, among other parties, to a meeting today to end the ongoing strike.
The heads of the Public Service Commission and SRC, as well as the secretaries of Labour, Treasury, and Health Cabinet, as well as CoG, did not show up for a conciliatory meeting two days ago.
The Employment and Labour Relations Court ordered on Wednesday that all parties to the negotiations physically attend the meeting in order to discuss all of the problems brought up in the physicians’ strike notice as well as the ongoing complaints in the health sector. This meeting is scheduled for this Thursday.
Some hospitals are turning away patients who depend on National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) cards to pay for services, even while the doctors fight with their employers.
This concerning trend raises concerns about patients’ access to basic medical care as defined by the constitution by leaving them trapped at the crossroads of disease and financial uncertainty.
The truth is that many patients are being forced to forgo treatment due to a lack of funds, despite the government’s claims that the one-year transition from NHIF to the Social Health Insurance Fund, which began last year, would be seamless and patients would continue to get treatments.
More than 400 rural hospitals declared earlier this month that they would no longer be providing care to NHIF-eligible patients due to an outstanding debt of over Ksh1.6 billion ($12 million).
Doctors informed graphic designer Timothy Mwangi, located in Nairobi, in 2021 that both of his kidneys had failed. He has been receiving dialysis twice a week without fail since then while awaiting a donor.
Finding a medical institution that accepted NHIF cards was a top priority when selecting one. All was well until the previous week.
We have been informed that we will need to pay for the dialysis services ourselves in the upcoming weeks and then submit a claim to the NHIF. The management gave us an explanation of how the parastatal’s financial debt has hamstrung them. The hospital has been using its funds to pay employees and purchase much-needed equipment for the past four months or so, according to Mr. Mwangi.
If Mwangi pays in cash, the sessions will cost Ksh19,000 ($1,433) per week, and the blood boosters, which were also funded by NHIF, will cost at least Ksh2,500 ($18.87).
It is gloomy. Prior to this, I had to raise the about Ksh3 million ($22,641) required for the transplant as well as the cost of transportation to the dialysis facility. But this is what I am now faced with. How many individuals can really afford to pay Ksh19,000 a week, please tell me?” https://newsaih.com/?p=833&preview=true he questioned.
Since 2021, Mwangi has been contributing Ksh12,000 ($90) annually to NHIF at the beginning of each year.
Since it’s a must, I was anticipating that receiving therapy wouldn’t present any difficulties. I so continued to question, “Where do I get the money?” when I was instructed to prepare to pay with cash. I cannot afford to miss a session because doing so would be harmful to my health, per my doctor’s orders. We feel like someone is killing us little by little,” he remarked.
After a hospital in Kisumu declined to treat her child using the NHIF card, Ms. Margret Otieno was forced to return home with her child.
“What worries me is that I have a hard time simply getting the Ksh500 ($3.77) that I need to send to NHIF each month, and when I really need the service, I can’t obtain it. I’ve paid until June,” she remarked.
She decided to get over-the-counter medication for a two-week-old flu.
“With just Ksh500 on me, I couldn’t have paid for a consultation or even the test that the physicians would have recommended. I’m short on cash,” she remarked.
“We use money to purchase medications and reagents for our patients, and we anticipate that the government would reimburse us for the money we provided after our services have been rendered. As things stand right now, we occasionally don’t get paid and it takes time for the money to be transferred. A private hospital manager stated, “Until SHIF is implemented, we will not be accepting the cards.
Hospitals are still waiting for SHIF to be implemented, and registration has not yet started. This month was the start of registration according to the gazetted regulations. The reason for the delay in this is unclear.
Confusion, disagreement, and criticism have plagued the Fund’s implementation. According to KMPDU, the shift will harm Kenyans employed in the informal economy, who do not have a steady source of income and must pay the annual sum upfront or risk not receiving services.
