No respite for patients as health strike continues

What you need to know:

  • Patients who had hopes of being treated were turned away by the watchmen manning the hospital’s gates with huge padlocks at the main entrance and other gates keeping the public away .
  • The patients and people battling addictions from Lamu and Taita Taveta counties arrived at the second largest mental health and substance abuse department seeking help but trainees at the institution had to turn them away.

Public hospitals in Mombasa remained deserted as patients sought medical attention from private practitioners as the health workers strike continued to bite.

At Coast General Hospital, the biggest referral institution in the region, empty beds depicted the dire situation of health care services. The ever busy emergency wing was equally deserted.

“There are no services, patients who had been admitted have since been discharged. Health workers have boycotted work and the situation is serious. The only part that is still operating is the intensive care unit,” said a worker at the hospital.

Patients who had hopes of being treated were turned away by the watchmen manning the hospital’s gates with huge padlocks at the main entrance and other gates keeping the public away .

“Even if I let you in there are no services, health workers have absconded their duties. Go to a private hospital,” a watchman was heard telling a mother who had rushed her sick child to the hospital.

A shaken Ms Zubeida Wanjiri, whose nine month-old child had suffered what she suspected to be a pneumonia attack said; “Where do I take this baby? I have no money. He might die if he does not get quick medical attention.”

At Tudor, Port Reitz and Likoni district hospitals, the situation was no different with patients crying for help and others urging the national government to intervene and save hundreds in need of medical attention.

The Kenya National Union of Nurses branch secretary Peter Moroko and his counterpart from the Kenya Medical Practitioners Pharmacists and Dentists Union Coast secretary-general Victor Teti told the Nation by phone that health workers will not resume duty unless they are paid all their dues.

ERRONEOUS DEDUCTIONS

“Eighty per cent of the health workers have received their dues but minimum deductions amount to Sh20,000. The workers will abscond duty unless the issue of erroneous deductions is sorted out and proof that August salaries will not have such hitches or they (county government) can run the hospital on their own,” said Dr Teti.

“Some nurses have had their salaries deducted. The county government is saying that it is an administrative issue which they will solve in the month of August. They are saying it is an error from the pay roll office,” said Mr Moroko.

He added that the officials had denied the deductions were an act of intimidation, and insisted they were erroneous.

About the slashed pay, a doctor said: “I don’t know what is happening. I went to the bank and found my salary slashed by a whooping Sh20,000. I think this county is joking with health workers; they do not understand our language. They are intimidating us by slashing our salaries.”

Meanwhile, acting county executive in charge of Health Tendai Mtana Lewa insisted that all the health workers had been paid.

“We are sorting out the deductions since it is an administrative issue but they have been paid,” he told the Nation during a phone interview.

This comes as more mentally ill patients were turned away at Port Reitz Hospital

Sunday, the patients and people battling addictions from Lamu and Taita Taveta counties arrived at the second largest mental health and substance abuse department seeking help but trainees at the institution had to turn them away.

The trainees also left earlier than usual saying there was “no work.”
Mombasa County could be the worst hit by this year’s health workers strike with nine people succumbing to their illnesses at public hospitals.