Patients suffer as clinical officers’ strike hits hospitals

Patients at public hospitals faced sparse services yesterday even as the government made a last-minute bid to get clinical officers to call off their strike.

Reports from counties indicated that patients, including at levels 2, 3 and 4 health facilities, were left unattended as clinical officers stayed away from work.

And even after the government announced late yesterday afternoon that it had resolved the medics’ outstanding issues, their umbrella body, the Kenya Clinical Officers Union (KUCO) maintained they were still on strike.

‘Discrimination and exclusion’

Clinical officers began their strike on Sunday night to protest, among other issues, what they call discrimination and their exclusion from offering services under the Social Health Authority (SHA).

Most patients at Coast General Teaching and Referral Hospital (CGTRH) were turned away and others left stranded as clinical officers withdrew their services effective Sunday midnight following the expiry of a two-week notice issued by KUCO.

It was a nightmare particularly for patients registered with SHA and seeking outpatient services, as such services were not available. And for desperate patients who nonetheless paid out-of-pocket hoping to be served, the frustrations were further exacerbated by the clinical officers’ no-show.

Vivian Jaoko, a vegetable vendor from Shanzu, had taken her daughter to CGTRH for follow-up review of her treatment for scoliosis – a spinal deformity that causes an abnormal sideways curve of the spine – only to encounter the disappointment of no services.

“Imagine I had to borrow some money for matatu fare because it has gone up. Because of [my daughter’s] condition, I had to carry her to save her from further damage and pain,” Jaoko said.

“But when I got here it was disappointment after disappointment. First I was told that I could not be served under SHA unless she is admitted. They were supposed to initiate the process for a back brace. Now we have just been told that a strike has started. I don’t know what to do and the child is supposed to go to school.”

An similar fate befell Dorothy Oscar, who took her five-year-old child to the hospital for a procedure to remove a lump on her arm.

“The hospital is only accepting cash for outpatient treatment. SHA is now exclusively for inpatients. I have been told to come tomorrow, but the clinical officers are on strike. I don’t know what will happen,” Dorothy said.

Earlier, KUCO said at a press briefing that it was not going to honour any agreements written on paper, which clinical officers said were always going to be discarded somewhere to gather dust. Instead, the union called for tangible solutions.

“There is no one who can understand, for instance, why we should negotiate a collective bargaining agreement for close to seven years and yet it has a life cycle of just four years,” wondered union officials.

Medical interns

The government could not be trusted as it still had medical interns on short-term engagement and those on contract under Universal Health Coverage (UHC) had not been hired on permanent and pensionable terms, said KUCO secretary general George Gibore.

“It’s rather disturbing to note that even as we complain and we had a return-to-work that provided that as they prepare even to transition them to permanent and pensionable, that is all people who are on short-term contracts, including the UHC,” he said.

He added: “So then we feel that every argument we have had with them [means nothing to them and] that probably they go and throw [it] away and they never even purpose to implement [it].

But governors rejected that view, saying they were taken aback by the resumption of the medics’ strike after they had a meeting last week in which they agreed to start implementing the union’s irreducible minimums starting yesterday.

The resolutions reached on January 14 during a consultative meeting between governors, Ministry of Health officials and clinical officers will be implemented to the letter, said Council of Governors Health Committee chairperson Muthomi Njuki (Tharaka Nithi) and his Labour Committee counterpart Johnson Sakaja (Nairobi).