On Strike!

As a fledgling Medical Officer intern, barely 2 months into my 1-year internship, I knew it would only be a matter of time before a strike came calling along. Actually the seeds of a strike never are too far away around here. I at least expected the strike would involve this unnecessarily hurried push that the counties are making towards devolving healthcare (practically a whole 2 years ahead of schedule). Kenyan institutions (particularly governmental ones) are not renowned for their efficiency; thus the general consensus is that devoid of proper systems, they just want to gobble up the medical funds (more speculation on that at another point in time).

This current juncture finds me dealing with a problem rooted in the old health system. We have an old tradition here, probably retained from colonial times, whereby you don't get paid for the first 3 months of work. After that, you receive the money for those 3 months in a big lump sum. I'm not exactly fond of this system considering that I was plucked from my usual stomping ground and deposited 6 hours drive away in Kisii, a town which I had barely passed through twice before. Even worse was the fact that I was only given a mere week in which to finalize all formalities, pack up my belongings, find a new house, and to be ready to report for duty. My Medical Superintendent basically told me that there was no way he could give me any more time to sort myself out because he had basically put me on payroll from the moment I showed up.

To tell you the truth, I felt the whole introductory portion could've been handled better, but then I was grateful to at least have a job offer. I didn't want to end up like my friends who had to wait a whole year before they were posted in April of this year. I'm glad my family cushioned my transition with all their encouragement and generous funding, which still continues till today.

However, it feels painful for the government to renege on an agreement like this. The current excuse they're using is that they have to weed out any 'Ghost Workers', so they basically have to show up at all internship centres to do a PHYSICAL head count of the interns. I get some of their logic, but it just boggles my mind that this is the same government that was supposedly elected on a "Digital" platform, yet they are just as inefficient as previous regimes. People might think I'm criticizing for critisicm's sake, but for your information I've had to submit piles of paperwork (going as far back as my primary school leaving certificate), all of which had to be filed with both the County and National Governments. It is unreasonable that I thus have to wait for officials from Nairobi - a whole 6 hours away - to complete their week-long or month-long (whichever) trip around this country to come seek me out.

Any other stories coming up about lateness in releasing funds are even harder to stomach considering the amount of funds wasted on vanity-affairs of our politicians or the fiscal irresponsibility displayed by government coffers. It is worrying that this is how one of the most essential services in the country, catering to the vast number of people unable to buy insurance, is run. They owe the people more than that...they owe the medical fraternity more than that. No professionals spend more hours in the service of the public, exposed to death and the deadliest of diseases on a regular basis, and still come out as under-appreciated.

There is great need to reform the public health system, if only for the simple reason that all citizens - rich or poor - could possibly end up as our patients. People forget that should they become incapacitated and have the misfortune to lose their wallets/purses containing their identification papers, premium health cards, etc., their destination is bound to be the public hospitals. That should be a scary notion for anyone to entertain under the current circumstances; you can't expect frustrated overworked workers to deliver the kind of services you would be proud of, so more needs to be done to relieve what is already a massively stressful job.

I'm not proud of the strike at all, but I'll follow up with it to give my fellow clinicians - who've been at this a whopping 4 months! - the numbers they need to make a painfully obvious point. In 5 days, hopefully this strike will be a thing of past, and I can then get back to my Surgical rotation, which I live for. Until then, I get a little "me-time" for myself. God Bless