Mombasa, Kenya: Patients at the Coast General Hospital (CGH) and other public health facilities within Mombasa County were hard hit as the 800 nurses began their strike yesterday over unmet demands.
Patients in wards, maternity and emergency sections seeking admission lay on their beds without attention. When The Standard on Sunday visited, most patients were seeking discharge.
The nurses claim the county government has not remitted their statutory deductions to the National Hospital Insurance Fund and National Social Security Fund to the national government. They are also demanding dues to their union and uniform allowance.
From the casualty and emergency, to the ward, the hospital remained deserted, save for the few subordinate staff advising patients and their kin to seek help elsewhere. “We’ve been here since morning all the while hoping that some help will come our way. There is no one to attend to us. The governor should sit and agree with the nurses to end this hopelessness,” said Mwaka Abdalla, a kin of a paralysis patient at the Emergency section.
Sarah Naliaka, who had a patient in Ward 8, which deals with fractures and orthopedic cases, claimed of her patient who was nursing wounds: “The wound is emitting foul smell as nurses doing the dressing are nowhere to be seen,” said Naliaka. But even in the dire situation, the county government threatened to sack the striking nurses. “We’re giving the nurses upto 5pm to resume duty failure to which appropriate action will be taken against those who will not have resumed duty,” warned the Mombasa County secretary, Hamisi Mwaguya.
But governor Hassan Joho, who toured the hospital, steered clear of the 5pm ultimatum, saying the county would move to court to have the strike declared illegal if the nurses would not have returned to work by Monday. The governor said the county was keen to increase the number of health workers at CGH and other health facilities in the county.
County health Chief, Dr Khadija Shikelly, said: “We have the numbers to replace the striking nurses. We advertised 52 nursing vacancies for applicants to be interviewed on 27 of this month... we’ve already received over 500 applications,” said Dr Shikelly.
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