Kenyan public hospital doctors rejected a government offer aimed at ending a weeks-long strike that has severely disrupted health services, their union chairman said late on Tuesday.
The Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union (KMPDU), which represents more than 7,000 members, went on strike on March 15 to demand payment of their salary arrears and the immediate hiring of trainee doctors, among other grievances.
The government asked the doctors to end their strike in a statement issued late on Tuesday, saying the salary arrears have been paid and that trainee doctors would be hiredfrom Thursday this week at a cost of 2.4 billion shillings ($18.39 million).
“We decline these proposals in total,” Abidan Mwachi, KMPDU’s chairman, wrote on social media platform X, adding that the government had not paid salary arrears.
The walkout, which has been compounded by a strike by clinical officers that started this week, has left patients struggling to access care from expensive private hospitals, leading to worsening chronic illnesses and even deaths.
In Nairobi’s Mathare slum, Jane Akoth said that she was turned away from the hospital on Tuesday when she went to get an operation done for her daughter Beatrice Akinyi, who was diagnosed with cancer last year.
