[Patients at one of the county's public hospitals. Marsabit County Heath Director has called on striking nurses to return to work and attend to patient.] (isiolowire.com)Marsabit County Heath Director has called on striking nurses to return to work and attend to patients he said were suffering in the county’s public health facilities.
James Shime said a tour of the county’s public hospitals showed that all nurses were away from duty as patients with different ailments seek for help.
He said patients flocked public health facilities because private hospitals were too expensive for the residents majority of whom come from poor families.
Nurses across the country are presently on strike demanding for the implementation of the Collective Bargaining Agreement they signed with the government.
The nurses’ strike followed a similar one staged by doctors for 100 days demanding a 300 per cent pay rise following an agreement they signed with the government.
“We have taken this too far,” Shime said on Saturday.
“Health is such an important aspect of society and we cannot afford to play with it. Without a healthy population we can’t move forward as a country.”
The council of governors through its chairman and Turkana Governor Josephat Nanok says counties do not have sufficient money to shoulder the nurses’ proposed salary rise.
The council, instead, has shifted blame to the Salaries and Remuneration Commission which it says has the responsibility of instituting an implementable salary structure.
Shime said most families in Marsabit have ferried their sick kin back home because of the absence of the nurses adding that this put the patients’ lives at risk.
Nurses have vowed to remain at home until the CBA is implemented.