I am a Kenyan doctor. I support the strike 300%
A colleague has posted this on face book. Please read and know the truth
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To Those Against The Strike
Even if doctors were in hospital, the typical public hospital experience would be as if they're not in anyway because of how bad the system is. (And I'm not talking about Kenyatta. Bad as it is, it's on the far better end of the spectrum.)
If you came in sick, gloves would be missing so it would be about 15 minutes before anyone comes to attend to you to examine you. There wouldn't be enough IV catheters so it would be another 5 or 10 minutes before someone runs around the hospital to find one. You'd also probably need fluids, which would be another 20 minutes. The doctor would then probably have to tell you to get your family members to go buy some of these things for you.
If it's at night and electricity is gone, you'd probably be getting examined by candle light because the generator's not been fueled. You're also likely to be getting examined by someone who hasn't slept in 30 hours. Or someone who is sick but was told by the same hospital he works every day for to sort himself out. Yes, it doesn't make sense but doctors can't afford the services they give. Medical cover for a doctor is about sh.1700 per month. That can't even buy a full dose of a simple ORAL drug regimen, leave alone intravenous drugs. You'd also probably be getting examined by someone who last had use of a working full blood count machine when he was in med school. Trust me, YOU, as a patient, don't want that. You'd probably also find that you have to wait another ten minutes for the nurses and doctors to attend to you because water to wash their hands with hasn't been bought yet. Yes! Outside of Nairobi, fresh and clean flowing water is not a guarantee.
I found out today that there is a hospital where the shortage of gloves is so bad that they clean used gloves with spirit and cotton wool. I will reserve my comment on that lest I end up cursing worse than sailors supposedly do.
You're also likely to be getting examined by a doctor who's recently bereaved but couldn't get leave to go participate in the funeral preparations because of the ridiculous shifts imposed by this stupid system. I have a friend who could only get three days off when her mother died. The three days it took to travel up country, bury her and come back.
With the insult of a medical cover they get, the diseases they are exposed to, their own children at home, with no gloves to work with, trust me you will sit in that waiting room for a loooooong time because no one is willingly going to expose his family to something if he can help it.
If it was Kenyatta, you'd probably then get admitted and given a bed to share with another patient with another person sleeping on a mattress beneath your bed.
Bottom line is, this system sucks. Doctors know what patients should be getting but don't. Patients don't! Patients blame doctors for any bad experiences they have and that makes sense because that's the person they see in hospital. So it only follows that it's the doctors that would be demanding these things from the government.
Unfortunately, the press is being used to confuse people. The strike is not only about salaries. The issue about salaries is point number 10 of a 13 point proposal. The union is not illegal yet NTV keeps reporting that. Monday was wasted debating its legitimacy instead of negotiating to avert the strike and it was settled anyway. KBC has been reporting that the strike has been called off to make us look confused but it hasn't. Nation has been reporting that the Civil Servant's union is the one that's supposed to represent doctors. That's poppy cock because until the new constitution came in, doctors were not unionisable (I know it's not a real word). Add to that the fact that until last week they have always been silent about the fact that despite being civil servants, doctors work twice as long as others. The law dictates that civil servants work 40 hours a week. Anything extra gets you over time. Doctors works over 100 hours a week WITH NO OVER TIME. Yet they've never tried to get that changed for us.
You may not be aware of it but the majority of the doctors in Kenyatta are unpaid workers. The masters students who basically run the hospital are not paid anything at all. And I'm not talking about a situation where they get allowances. Uh Uh. NOTHING! Yet they are expected to pay fees (over sh. 200,000) and rent to KNH. It took forever to convince my mother that I wasn’t just being sensationalist when I told her that.
Nyongo dares to say Kenyan doctors are not up to international standards yet the government recently withdrew sponsorship for masters students. If you can believe it, it stopped sponsoring even those it had already begun supporting. When those unfortunate ones finished with their studies they were informed the government had not been paying up and they couldn't graduate without paying it out of their own (very empty) pockets. In other countries, including African countries mind you, masters students are paid higher than medical officers to encourage people to seek further education. Yes. That's your Minister of HEALTH!
And please, be sure, saying that we're a third world country is a very irresponsible excuse. Accepting things as they are is irresponsible complacency and it's cowardly! God isn't going to transform things if we don't do our part. If you don't prepare for an exam and you pray, God's not going to make you pass because that's IRRESPONSIBLE!
Yesterday, only yesterday, there's a doctor in Kenyatta, NATIONAL REFERRAL hospital who spent 15 minutes searching for gloves.
Early this year, I had a patient who died in a few hours because in Casualty, in THE NATIONAL REFERRAL HOSPITAL, only one port for oxygen was working that night.
There was a time for TWO FULL WEEKS, the full blood count machine in Kenyatta was not working. Kenyatta which makes millions a day. Please tell me how that makes any sense at all. The patients are lucky that we're in Nairobi because we were taking blood samples and sending their family members with them across the road to Nairobi hospital or private labs around for the test. My friend in Western told me they actually get surprised when the machine is working, which is very rare anyway. These things must end. Things are getting worse.
A friend of mine had to perform a lumbar puncture on a patient earlier this year without the use of spirit. Lumbar puncture is meant to be a sterile procedure to begin with. Because we don't have the facilities to do it as such, we make do with what we have. Even then however, surgical spirit must be available. The patient needed that LP ASAP. He searched for spirit in other wards but found none. He eventually had to do it using water and cotton wool to clean the site. Fortunately the patient didn't get a new infection but the toll it took on my friend is WRONG because he couldn't get over the fact that he'd just performed an LP WITHOUT SPIRIT! Guess which hospital this was? Yep! That's right. Your NATIONAL REFERRAL HOSPITAL. By the way people, you've been lied to.
A cardiologist I know told me in the 90s, she and a group of her doctor friends formed a committee to try and improve things in public hospitals. They picked a small one (can’t remember which), got computers, got financial advisers to streamline the hospital's records etc. The revenue tripled and they were able to improve things.
They then thought, if that could happen with such a small hospital, how much better for Kenya would it be if they could improve Kenyatta? So they began. There's even a country that donated computers to Kenyatta for this.
She told me every member in that committee began receiving death threats. Not as a group, but as named individuals. The thing that people don't know is that the doctors aren't the ones who receive and deal with the money in hospitals. Administration is NOT made of doctors. The administration is the final word on who will ACTUALLY get admitted, and what will be done using money collected. In Kenyatta, as they soon found out, there's a system by which large crazy amounts of money disappear.
The government did nothing, absolutely nothing, to protect the people in this committee. Did nothing to help them achieve their goals. Did absolutely NOTHING! She quit government and went her own way. And who can blame her? Her government wasn't going to help or protect her. She told me there was a time patients who needed dialysis could come with an overnight bag to Kenyatta, get admitted, and be back to work with a toxin-free body next morning. Now, the reality is that even if you need dialysis, you will definitely miss a day of work per week, and you most definitely will have to buy materials, drugs and reagents to be used for dialysis because Kenyatta doesn't have them. Kenyatta which makes millions per day off of the public.
Like I said, IT DOES NOT MAKE SENSE!
And if you're thinking there really must be another way for respectable professionals like doctors to do this, woi! I'm pleading with you, give us ideas. And none of the ones that make sense because the government has proved resistant to all of those. Like negotiations? Like proposals? Like dialogue? Ha ha ha. I don't think my phone even has the capacity to type out the things running around in my mind.
Doctors have never been unionisable. Before the constitution came in, that meant we didn't have the legal ability to form a body that could discuss with the government our grievances. Yet we still tried. It's been over ten years. Case in point
http://www.nytimes.com/2...-pay-causes-flight.html
Once we could form a union, we did. There were many parties that tried blocking registration, including the Civil servant's union that apparently is meant to defend us, but we managed.
The proposals we had, all 13 of them, have been around amorphously since forever so preparing and sending them to government was a breeze. To all parties concerned including Ministry of Finance.
According to the Abuja resolutions, African governments are supposed to provide 15% of the budget for health care. In the 90s it was 9%. 2009 it was 7%. Last year, 6.5%. This year it was an insulting 5.4%. News flash! Your 'Government' doesn't care about your health care because like Nyongo, they can each afford to fly out to hospitals that are fully equipped. (On a side note, I felt like jumping into my telly to raise hell when Nyongo said Kenyans are dying of cancer because they don't have medical insurance. He was insulting practically the whole of Kenya because only a small fraction can actually afford insurance!)
Equatorial Guinea spends 353 dollars on its citizens for health. Kenya spends a whooping…12 dollars on each citizen on health. Because they care about us so much. <gag></gag>
Your government and Ministry of Health does NOTHING when private hospital administrations charge you 2 million for a one month stay. A friend's dad racked up a bill of 4 M for a 2 month stay. That DOES NOT MAKE ANY SENSE! Yet our wonderful leaders do nothing.
The strike notice was issued a bit of a longer time to allow for negotiations because doctors going on strike is just wrong. The government however doesn't actually think we'll go on strike.
Why? One, most doctors came from high schools that would almost never go on strike, eg, Precious blood, Starehe, Strathmore, etc. In Campus, when the University would be on strike, a lot of medics would be finding out about it first on TV a day after it's begun. Three, doctors striking would generate public outcry and anger which they're hoping will be enough to avert it. And the press is making damned sure of that by reporting half truths, twisted stories and flat out LIES!
Another thing that's happened is the nurses' union calling for a strike. Our union asked them to join us in agitating for better hospital conditions. They refused. Last week they announced a strike, asking for 300% increase like us. They called their strike off on Friday evening. The conditions they accepted, if carefully analysed, are things that they were supposed to have had ANYWAY. The government brought nothing new to the table yet they called their strike off. A group of nurses yesterday actually went to a doctor to ask her why our strike is still on. They said they thought calling theirs off would make ours weaker. These nurses were actually surprised that the strike is for real. I'm not talking about some fictional world. This happened YESTERDAY!
On Monday last week, you would think the government would be serious about averting the strike by engaging in negotiations. Monday was wasted discussing the legitimacy of the union. Surprise surprise, the conclusion was that it is.
Tuesday found the union officials receiving news that 95 doctors' salaries had been stopped. You see, when the government is displeased with a doctor demanding for their rights, they either re-post you to some remote island accessible only by a tiny boat, or they stop your salary. It's actually so common to hear of our leaders to be treated this way that we accept it. So Tuesday got wasted with the union demanding that their salaries be re-instated.
Come Wednesday, news arrived that union representatives were getting transfers. Another scare tactic. So Wednesday got wasted trying to correct that situation.
I'm not too sure about Thursday's meeting but Friday brought what just sent me into a rage. That’s when I cracked. I was so angry at the government I know I'll NEVER EVER EVER respect any of those people for as long as I live.
On Friday they said they've finally seen our proposal and that negotiations should start on Monday. What on EARTH?! That proposal was sent ages ago. My goodness. It's just that I think it's stupid to use curse words but my mind is full of extremely colorful language right now.
Nyongo recently said on a breakfast show that interns' house allowance is sh. 40,000. That makes me want to punch him because guess what? That's the whole salary!!! Yet he feels no shame saying that on TV.
Please be sure, BE SURE, your government does NOT care that you might need to get dialysis and only FOUR public hospitals in a country of 40 million, have dialysis machines.
We've called tomorrow Dr. Gatune day. This man worked in Busia District Hospital. He went to visit his family in Kiambu and got malaria. A few days later, he got acute kidney failure. Kiambu DH couldn't help him. He died on the way to KNH because that was the closest public hospital with a dialysis machine. Because he couldn't afford to get admitted in a private hospital with one. It doesn't make any sense!
Last week, Dr. Hassan fell ill. I won’t go into the whole story but he got admitted in Kenyatta. Because he’s a doctor, his people were appealing with Kenyatta to admit him in the private wing and allow for funds to be raised with time.
You see the thing is, the wards in Kenyatta are so bad that after surgeries, I’ve had many patients ask me in desperation whether they’ll be able to go home immediately without having to go back to the ward. When dignitaries visit Kenyatta or choirs go to sing there, they are sent to the cancer ward which is all done up in nice colours with nice looking facilities. Not to the harsh reality of the public wards.
You would think that with a doctors’ strike in one week, Kenyatta would want to be seen to be doing something to alleviate doctors’ suffering. NOT SO. Because Dr. Hassan could not afford it, they refused to admit him in the private wing.
As doctors we decided to bail him out, collected funds and had him transferred to Equator hospital. He’s now better thank God and will be able to continue with his wedding on 10th December.
Dr. Gatune was not so lucky.
We must stop situations in which doctors like Dr. Gatune and Dr. Hassan are being treated like they’re not important to this society.
Just this weekend, NTV was reporting that nurses backed out of the strike to make it seem as if we had a joint strike and we're the heartless ones refusing to back down. Like I said, poppy cock.
Nation online last night quoted our Secretary General as having gone down to half our demands so as to call off the strike. The stupidity with that is that number one, he never said any such thing. Two, the government was actually offering an allowance of sh. 7000 for us to call it off. And three, most annoying of all (I'm going to SCREAM!), they haven't even STARTED addressing the other 12 proposals dealing with improving the whole system.
KBC, as late as yesterday, was still reporting that our strike is off. I've had to completely ignore the press now because they're just spreading lies.
KBC and Nation today are reporting that our union is illegal and the strike we had was illegal. I will remind you that that is what Monday last week was wasted on and the conclusion was that everything is in order.
Today parliament announced that there will be a retreat to discuss infant and maternal mortality. Let me even stop discussing that before I vomit.
While we were outside Ministry of Finance today, we were listening to our chairman speak. The demo turned out to be even more peaceful than my hopes and prayers. So there we were silently listening and two GSU vehicles came out of nowhere. The drivers were moving their vehicles back and forth into the crowd as if to ram into us and they whipped out their guns and started running at us brandishing them. At that very point my rage was so complete the only reason I moved from where I was is that I'm so tiny I got pushed out of the way by the crowd of people running off to the sides.
The stupid people were revving their engines at us as if we'd challenged them to something. Whooosaaaah! Apparently they were transporting money. I don't think that's enough of a reason to almost run people over and brandish guns at them when their attention wasn't even directed at you in the first place.
Sigh! You know what. Let me just pause and leave it at that because I'm getting very riled up now. Suffice it to say, there's a world of wrong with this government and its attitude to health care.
It's an insult to our intelligence and it would be a tragedy for doctors to let this continue.
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Peace in our Homeland.