Why the Cuban doctors might be hard to resist
What you need to know:
There is a lot of goodwill for foreign health workers in Kenya — a legacy of decades of significant involvement by missionaries and charities in the country’s healthcare.
Hospitals and clinics operated by faith-based organisations and charities in different parts of the country, including some of the remotest areas, are associated with many success stories.
- They tend to be better equipped and relatively affordable compared to their equivalents run by the government or private businesses.
Many Kenyans can’t just wrap up their minds around the idea of the government going out to import Cuban doctors when there are more than 1,000 local ones out of employment.
Taxpayers are especially entitled to feel that the money the State spent on training most of these unemployed doctors at public universities has been wasted.
It doesn’t help either that the Cubans don’t come cheap anyway, with each of the 47 specialists from the Caribbean set to cost the taxpayer some Sh800,000 in monthly salary besides other perks.
This is probably no more than they deserve considering the fact that Kenyan specialist doctors on the same pay scale are entitled to the same salary and perks under the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) negotiated by the doctors’ union last year.
SHORTAGE
And it is difficult to argue against the need for the Cubans with the acute shortage and the malignant distribution pain that has seen Nairobi attracting 1,340 specialists and counties like Wajir, Mandera, Marsabit and Vihiga none.
But, in a country where a small club of largely idle State officers is overpaid and the pay gap between the super earners and the lowest-paid in the civil service is dizzying, a six-digit-figure salary to a foreigner for work that some local guy can do is still bound to inflame public opinion.
Social media reaction to reports of the remuneration deal offered to the Cubans suggests that they will have quite some work to do trying to win hearts and minds in the communities where they will be deployed.
MISSIONARIES
Yet there is a lot going for them as well. There is a lot of goodwill for foreign health workers in Kenya — a legacy of decades of significant involvement by missionaries and charities in the country’s healthcare.
Hospitals and clinics operated by faith-based organisations and charities in different parts of the country, including some of the remotest areas, are associated with many success stories.
They tend to be better equipped and relatively affordable compared to their equivalents run by the government or private businesses. And their doctors and other staff get very good reviews by the local people for patient care and work ethic.
When President Uhuru Kenyatta recently visited Tenwek Hospital in Bomet County he was so impressed by what he saw he told his health people to come up with public hospitals modelled on Tenwek in a number of counties.
WORK ETHIC
Well, it turns out that it is not just the facilities that make Tenwek different.
A new report by the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Board shows that the Bomet hospital has the bulk of the 358 US doctors (149) licensed to practise in the country, followed by another familiar success story — AIC Kijabe Hospital (86).
In total there were 1,019 foreign doctors licensed to operate in Kenya as at March.
If the Cubans replicate the work ethic of the best of this lot, they will be hard to resist.
[email protected]; @otienootieno
