Today we reflect on the healthcare system through the eyes and words of a medical doctor after a visit to the Kiambu County hospital earlier last week. Some of you may have read this online but it is a narration I am happy to share a redacted version here because it is very pertinent.
“I (the doctor) have just attended to some desperate, emaciated, terminally ill patients awaiting some life-prolonging procedures. Their relatives are praying for them, having faith that everything is being done to take care of them at the facility and believe what the politicians are telling them about the state of health in the country.
“A lot of lies. The truth is: There are no nurses to attend to the patients as needed because the county cannot afford to employ them. There are no materials to use on patients’ wounds because the county cannot pay suppliers.
Equipment in theatre and other departments hired expensively under the much-hyped Managed Equipment Service is broken and the repair process is stuck in some unexplained bureaucracy where neither the county nor the national government accepts responsibility.
“There are no medicines, essential or otherwise. There is a scarcity of water in the hospitals. Casual workers have been unpaid for more than a year, and they still report to work. Others have unfulfilled employment promises.
Leased equipment
“Broken leased equipment compounds the theatre problems, with pregnant mothers having complications sharing theatre space with other surgical procedures in spaces without water.
“While this is going on, those charged with responsibility to make things work will sit in their air-conditioned offices away from the din and talk of how their grand plan for universal health care service is right on schedule.
“I remember the sickening interview I saw on Citizen TV on March 6, about The State of Health Care in Kenya with KMPDU (Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Union) Secretary-General Davji Bhimji Atellah and the Council of Governors’ Health Committee chairman, Governor Muthomi Njuki. Issues being raised by the doctors’ union and Kenyans are being dismissed by a smug, arrogant elected official who never uses the public health services whose national committee he chairs, ostensibly for the public good.
“The contentious issues that were being discussed included: the MES leasing agreement; the Cu-ban doctors imported into Kenya; the Collective Bargaining Agreement between the doctors union and the GoK and the Health Service Commission (HSC).
“In the MES, the Governor is only concerned at the opaque nature of the procurement but he is very comfortable with the arrangement because counties now ‘have modern equipment in the facilities’. He is unconcerned that the leasing fee was exaggerated.
He is completely unconcerned that in most county facilities, the equipment is idle because there are no health care workers to operate them, even as we near the end of the leasing agreement that he is very happy to extend…to whose benefit?
“The Governor is full of praise for the expatriate medics because, in his words, they are disciplined and focused on their work. And, wait for this…they are hired and seconded by the national government so they save the counties money. He does not mention that the counties have to accommodate these doctors in specified houses and hotels, provide security and other services which are reserved for the Cubans, but not for the local doctors who must be children of a lesser god because they are Kenyans.
“He then says HSC, whose work would be employing, seconding to the counties and paying local health workers is against the Constitution. That is twisted logic and double-speak. It is OK for Cubans to be employed by the national government and be seconded to counties, but not good for unemployed local doctors to be employed by the national government and seconded to counties.
CBA Agreement
“He repeats the same argument in the CBA Agreement) discussion, terming the medics impatient and out of touch with the realities of the Public Service Commission which the doctors are a part of. They are public servants and they must be paid as public servants.
“He doesn’t realise that HSC would solve the perennial excuse counties have of an inflated wage bill i.e. paying health care workers on postgraduate training while out of their station. It also takes away the baggage of handling the huge pay bill which they always complain about.
“He goes ahead to imply that doctors who are employed on casual terms should be happy because many Kenyans are unemployed. A governor who cannot appreciate that there is a crisis in the public health care system due to inadequate numbers of health care personnel to take care of Kenyans is talking about an oversupply of HCWs (Health Care Workers) in the job market.
“This is an oxymoron, but understandable, given the nature of the people we are dealing with. Entitled, selfish leaders that only show interest in public institutions during recruitment and procurement. Service delivery is a line they just rehearse and use. We are a sick society.”
Indeed, Dr Samson Misango, indeed. BY DAILY NATION