Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union secretary general Dr Davji Atellah speaks during a press briefing/FILEKenyan doctors have threatened to go on strike if the ongoing nurses' dispute is not resolved within seven days, warning that the prolonged industrial action is putting further pressure on an already strained public health system.
Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union (KMPDU) secretary general Dr Davji Atellah said doctors could not continue shouldering responsibilities normally handled by nurses as the strike enters its sixth week.
“Doctors cannot do the nursing jobs,” Atellah said, warning that public hospitals were operating at bare minimum because of the disruption.
He said the absence of nursing care was affecting patients who require continuous care, while doctors, who are already in short supply, were being overburdened.
“Social services have been disrupted. There's no better way to say than saying every patient who goes to the hospitals who needs nursing care cannot get it,” Atellah said.
He said nursing care was a key component of a functional health system and warned that the situation was becoming increasingly unsafe.
Atellah said the union had observed cases of deaths and complications involving children and mothers that he argued could have been prevented if public hospitals were functioning normally.
“There are many deaths, both for paediatrics, for maternal, for mothers that otherwise would be prevented if you have functional hospitals,” he said.
He also warned that conditions that could ordinarily be treated were worsening because patients were not receiving adequate nursing care.
“There are many preventable complications that we cannot normalise amidst this particular industrial action,” Atellah said.
“We see the government in action at this particular point. We see that the government has taken a stand to watch.”
Atellah said the dispute was not new and that the concerns raised by nurses could be traced back to the 2017 return-to-work formula.
“These are not issues that occurred the day before. The issues that emanated from 2017 return to work formula,” he said.
He argued that successive governments were aware of the outstanding issues and should therefore not treat them as new demands.
Atellah also said agreements signed between the government and health workers' unions and deposited in court should be implemented.
“The agreements that are signed and that are deposited in court are court orders and need to be implemented,” he said.
While supporting efforts to resolve the nurses' dispute, KMPDU said it also had outstanding matters concerning doctors.
Atellah said doctors had been promised adjustments to their payslips in August, but the changes had not been effected.
“We were promised that the adjustment of payslip for doctors was to be done in the month of August, which has not been done yet,” he said.
He expressed hope that the adjustments would be implemented in September.
The warning comes as the prolonged nurses' strike continues to affect services in public health facilities, with KMPDU now giving the government seven days to resolve the dispute or face the possibility of another health workers' strike.
