A Health crisis looms in Nyamira county after doctors announced this afternoon that they will officially down their tools at midnight.
Speaking to the press, KMPDU Nyanza branch chairman Dr. Onyango Ndong’a. said the county has been very disrespectful and contemptuous to their strike notice.
“We have patiently and diplomatically tried to solve the issues we raised in our strike notice but like we have mentioned before the kind of responses Nyamira county has given us have been very disrespectful and very contemptuous,” he said.
Onyango said they raised the issue of healthcare workers’ rights claiming that there are doctors who have been working for Nyamira county for more than 20 years and they are still in entry level job group.
“The consequence of that is that they are not motivated and the patient is not getting maximum service that this doctor is supposed to offer,” he said.
Onyango further said the other issues they want addressed is equipment and personnel saying that Nyamira has very few doctors and patients are getting a raw deal.
“When a doctor is seeing you after working for 52 hours then that doctor is not productive and is more likely dangerous to you,” he said.
He said the county should have at least one doctor serving at least 1000 patients but right now they have only 41 doctors in the county meaning they have a deficit of 500 doctors.
The Secretary General Dr. Aggrey Orwenyo also reiterated the need for the county to heed to their demands to avert the crisis.
“We have been patient enough as per law we were to issue a seven-day notice but we gave them 21 days and they have never called us for a meeting,” Orwenyo said.
He said they will be on strike for as long as it takes for the county to wake up and do what it’s supposed to do.