Kenya Union of Clinical Officers Chairman Peterson Wachira addresses the Press after medics downed tools yesterday. [Jonah Onyango, Standard]
Healthcare workers have stood their ground seven days into a strike that is slowly crippling the public healthcare system amid criticism from various leaders.
Meeting on Monday at Uhuru Park, healthcare workers under the leadership of Kenya Union of Clinical Officers (KUCO), have continued to criticise the government for having misplaced priorities and neglecting frontline workers amid a pandemic that has threatened lives and the economy of the country. Patriotism is not suicide and we are not ready to commit suicide in a country that does not want to appreciate its own healthcare workers, valiantly said KUCO chairperson Peterson Wachira.
Health workers at Afya House on December 9, 2020. [Edward Kiplimo,Standard]
The omission of the ongoing plight of healthcare workers in President Uhuru Kenyatta’s speech on Jamhuri Day has rubbed a section of medics the wrong way.
Clinical officers, who are on strike, have claimed the decision by Uhuru to avoid addressing the issue yet it was a national discourse infers to his administration’s misplaced priorities.
Despite alluding to some of the achievements the country has made in the health sector, and particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic, the president steered clear of the ongoing strike, which has seen nurses and clinical officers stay away from public hospitals.