KNH’s troubles escalated on Tuesday when doctors threatened to strike because they are understaffed.
Doctor-lecturers went on strike on March 1 to push for the payment of their risk and emergence call allowances.
And on March 5, doctors undergoing post graduate training, commonly known as registrars, withdrew their services from Kenyatta National Hospital and Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret Uasin Gishu County.
KNH surgeon Ian Kimani said: “We will be forced to withdraw elective clinics and theatres because we cannot handle the emergencies that come to Kenyatta.”
Kimani, who addressed journalists outside the hospital on behalf of his colleagues, also spoke of 700 post-graduate doctors who withdrew their services on Monday as their supervisors, who also lecture, downed their tools.
The surgeon noted Kenya’s largest referral facility cannot control resident doctors as it is not their employer.
“Those doctors do not belong to Kenyatta,” he said. “We have told the government so many times to look into the dichotomous relationship between the University of Nairobi and KNH but our pleas always fall on deaf ears. We want them [the government] to at least give Kenyatta some cash so students are given a small stipend.”
Many of the 700 are self-sponsored students who take up 85 per cent of the work load at the hospital.
The facility which is the oldest in the country has a capacity of 1,200 patients but is currently accommodating 2,400.
The post-graduate students also demanded that a Neurological Registrar suspended over a brain surgery mix-up be reinstated.
KNH has has been on the spot in the last several weeks over allegations of rape, the kidnapping of a baby and a brain surgery on the wrong patient.
Amid an investigation, the hospital insists it is committed to delivering the best services.
Story courtesy of the-star.co.ke
