Doctors to join their striking Kiambu colleagues starting Wednesday

Doctors have announced plans to escalate the Kiambu County strike beginning next Wednesday.

Speaking on Saturday, October 4, the Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists, and Dentists Union (KMPDU) officials accused Kiambu Governor Kimani Wamatangi of ignorance, calling for his resignation.

"We will start a series of demonstrations carrying the coffins that dramatise the painful nature of the death that occurred in Kiambu in the carelessness of the county government," said KMPDU Secretary-General, Davji Atellah.

He added: "We are asking the residents of Kiambu County that the people in office were elected by us. We must turn out in big numbers to ask for the resignation of the governor who has failed and is in office to oversee deaths rather than offering services."

Doctors working in Kiambu County have been on industrial action for the last four months, demanding their salaries that are seven months in arrears, with "no resolution in sight."

They are also demanding payment of statutory deductions and union dues.

"We as doctors are saying that we shall not in any way keep silence when mothers are crying, when the residents of Kiambu county are wallowing with desperation, when there's a whirlwind of frustration in them," said Atellah.

According to KMPDU, some 136 children have lost their lives in two Kiambu Level 4 and Thika Level 5 hospitals in September alone, deaths the medics attributed to ignorance by the leadership of the county.

Yesterday, the county leadership refuted the figure as ‘’false” and “sensationalised,’’ saying "just 110" newborn babies have died. “These claims are false and aimed at creating a crisis that is non-existent in the health sector in Kiambu,” the statement read.

KMPDU stood their ground, saying the figures are authentic even as they questioned "how many more should die for you [Wamatangi] to feel the pain of your people and wake up and act."

"Mothers are denied a chance to celebrate the joy of motherhood. Families' tears denied of joy replaced by tears of pain and anguish with no end in sight," he said.

They further faulted the county boss for charging fees in the primary health facilities that have been prescribed to be free. Atellah hinted at the union calling for a nationwide doctors' strike should the county fail to heed their demands, a decision that he said will be ratified by the national advisory council meeting scheduled on October 25.

"We are going to declare a national industrial action so that we can all stand firm to ensure that the injustice, the indignity, the suffering of the is shared across the country with all the doctors for this governor to go home," he said.

He further called on President William Ruto to dissolve the county, arguing Wamatangi's administration has failed to deliver for the people of Kiambu.