Patients’ agony as nurses strike

Patients at Kenyatta National Hospital were on Wednesday under the care of casual workers after nurses went on strike demanding a 46 per cent pay increase awarded by the High Court last year.

The more than 2,000 nurses accused the hospital’s management of reneging on effecting the salary increment award.

They protested outside the main building of the country’s largest medical referral institution. Some stood in the verandahs and others on elevated platforms singing through loudspeakers and holding placards.

Chief executive Richard Lesiyampe later addressed the workers and promised a quick solution from the Ministry of Health.

Late on Wednesday, Health Cabinet Secretary James Macharia issued a statement urging the nurses to return to work while also promising to implement the Comprehensive Bargaining Agreement. "The Government will ensure full implementation of the Comprehensive Bargaining Agreement (CBA) from July 2013," read part of the statement.

The nurses only attended to emergency cases at the Intensive Care Unit, High Dependency Unit, Paediatrics and the accident and emergency wards.
Casual workers took charge in other wards.

Only emergency cases

“We are human beings and we do not want those in critical condition to die. So we have allowed some of our members to attend to emergency cases as was requested by the hospital,” Mr Jared Conam, the chairman of the Hospital Works Committee, told the Nation.

Mr Conam is also the chairman of the Kenya Union of Domestic Hotels and Allied Workers.

A hospital management source who sought anonymity said about 500 attendants had been hired to clean bed sheets, deliver food or supply drug prescriptions to patients abandoned by the nurses.

“We have been served by different people today,” said Ms Margaret Jeruto, whose two-year-old son is admitted with a blood ailment. But the casual workers could not cope with patients streaming in the country’s largest hospital.

“I have been here since 7am ... We were too many and service was slow,” said elderly Ms Annet Wairimu.

Ms Jane Ngari had accompanied her brother Steve, who was attacked by gangsters on Tuesday night.

Although the nurses attended to him, she too claimed it had taken ages. “I put him in the stretcher here a long time ago. No one could assist so I had to do it all alone. He has been attended to but it took too long,” she said.

In September last year, the High Court awarded the workers a 46 per cent increment on their basic pay.

Reported by Aggrey Mutambo, Linda Anemba, Stacey Alugo and Brian Wasuna