Patients keep off Coast public hospitals as strike continues

Crucial health services such as free maternity, inpatient and surgeries have been paralysed at the Coast General Provincial Hospital and other public hospitals in the region owing to the ongoing doctor’s strike that has now entered its 40th day.

The only operating sections at the hospital, which is the largest referral hospital in the Coast, are the new born unit, the intensive care unit and at the paediatric ward.

Most of the other remain closed.

A nurse revealed to the Nation that a doctor from the Kenya Defence Forces is also helping a handful of doctors who show up at the hospital to offer services.

“The doctor comes to check on the babies. We only help expectant mothers who deliver normally,” said the nurse.

The situation is the same at Port Reitz, Likoni and Tudor sub-county hospitals.

The Nation found nurses and other health workers idling in the empty wards as patients shun public hospitals due to lack of treatment.

PRIVATE HOSPITALS

The situation has forced patients to seek medical services in private hospitals which are now charging exorbitantly.

At Port Reitz District Hospital, the maternity wing and the paediatric wards were completely shut down with a few nurses left manning the empty wards.

“We don’t have patients because there are no doctors, nurses don’t treat,” said a nurse at the hospital who declined to be named.

Saumu Abdhalah, whose 10-month-old baby, Sarah Wanyama, had missed the measles jab that is normally given to children at nine months, was glad when nurses gave her child the vaccination.

“She had missed the jab that is normally administered to children at nine months after nurses and doctors boycotted duties,” said the 27-year-old mother.

At the Msambweni County Referral Hospital in Kwale County, some 84 nurses were taking care of expectant mothers and a few patients admitted at the wards.

It is the largest public hospital in the county.

A nurse at the hospital said operations such as caesarean section have been stopped.

MOTHERS DELIVER AT HOME

The nurse said some of the mothers have resorted to deliver at home with the help of traditional birth attendants.

“We are overstretched. Expectant mothers come here in need of CS but we can’t perform the operation so we are forced to tell them to seek services in private hospitals.

“We are only dealing with normal deliveries whose numbers have also dwindled,” said the nurse who sought anonymity.

The county’s Health executive Kishindo Mwaleso said although the doctors’ strike has affected health services, other cadres of health workers are working.

“Most services are available, apart from surgical, caesarean and orthopaedic,” he said.

Doctors have been on strike since December 5, 2016 demanding for the Implementation of a July 2013 collective bargaining agreement which they signed with the government.

The doctors turned down President Uhuru Kenyatta’s offer of a 40 per cent pay rise where a least paid doctor would receive a monthly salary of Sh196,989, up from the current Sh140,244.