Kenyatta National Hospital has in recent days dominated the news for all the wrong reasons.
From rape allegations, stealing of a baby, to the neural- surgeon mix-up, Kenyans have had enough to develop real fears about their wellbeing at the hands of medics in the region’s largest referral hospital.
But it is the move by other registrar doctors to withdraw their services protesting the suspension of the four individuals involved in the botched surgery - and the defense of suspended KNH CEO Lily Koros by some politicians - that has really worried me.
The late Prof. George Saitoti once famously said that ‘There comes a time when the nation is more important than an individual’.
No one can reasonably argue that the CEO does not deserve attention, nor can it reasonably be disputed that attending to the sick should always be paramount for those charged with their care.
The failure of a hospital to act ethically cannot be corrected by serving injustices to patients. Only when the benefit of the patient is the ultimate goal, and only after all other avenues of negotiation have been exhausted, can healthcare providers ethically leave their patients’ bedsides to go on strike.
If we as a society allow those who care for our sick to abandon their oaths and their duties any more readily than this, then, we too have abandoned our sick. One ethical principle in particular imposed universally on all health providers is first to care for the patient.
The unspeakable suffering of patients every time medics go on strike cannot be overstated. According to British philosophers Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, the utilitarian ethics of doctors focuses on the balance of good and harm and also consequences of a given action.
Doctors shouldn’t be permitted to go on strike in just the same way as police officers and armed forces personnel are not permitted to withdraw their vital services to the community.
The goal of the strike may only be aligned with keeping the patients’ best interests in focus. It is ironical that the course of the strike is to defend one of their own regardless of the victim who underwent the surgery and barely six weeks after claims of sexual assault on new mothers at the facility. Times have changed, and by anyone's standards, doctors are now well rewarded financially for the vital, life-saving work they do. As a doctor, their priority is always to look after patients, yet the strike action has put patients' lives at risk and damaging the esteemed reputation of the medical profession.
I conclude that the risk of harm to patients outweighs the need to use the strike as an objection in most circumstances, and that the strike is only an ethical option in exceptional situations.