The nurses’ strike has dragged on for 50 days, crippling public hospitals and leaving thousands of Kenyans without essential medical care. For those who cannot afford private hospitals, the choice is painfully simple: endure the suffering or leave their fate in the hands of God.
Yet the contrast with the recent aviation strike is telling. The aviation dispute lasted barely three days before a solution was found. The disruption of flights inconvenienced politicians, business executives and the affluent, and suddenly there was urgency to get everyone back in the air.
Why has the same urgency been absent in resolving the nurses’ strike?
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The answer may lie in a painful reality: many of those making decisions are insulated from the consequences of a collapsed public health system.
When a public hospital closes its doors, they can simply walk into a private facility. When flights are grounded, however, their own travel plans are disrupted.
This is not merely a labour dispute. It is a question of whose lives and suffering matter to those in power.
Healthcare is a constitutional right, not a privilege reserved for Kenyans who can afford private treatment.
Leaders who can mobilise government machinery within hours to resolve disruptions that affect the powerful must explain why they cannot do the same when ordinary citizens are denied healthcare.
The prolonged nurses’ strike is a failure of leadership. Government must stop watching from the sidelines and urgently negotiate a sustainable settlement.
A government that moves fastest when the powerful are inconvenienced but slowly when the poor suffer has its priorities badly misplaced.
Quote of the Day: "It is the curse of humanity that it learns to tolerate even the most horrible situations by habituation."—German politician, anthropologist and pathologist Rudolf Virchow died on September 5, 1902
