Acting Director General of Health Patrick Amoth of the Ministry of Health says the agency faces a unique challenge in balancing the needs of interns and doctors with its limited funding.
The medical field is in disarray due to a doctors' strike that began on Wednesday and is now on its fourteenth day. The doctors are protesting the ministry's noncompliance with a 2017 Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) and its failure to post medical interns.
Dr. Amoth claims that although the ministry has seen an increase in interns, the number of positions it can accept is constrained by the National Treasury's budgetary allocation.
He claims that more medical personnel and facilities are needed to accommodate the exponentially growing number of student doctors.
Did you read this?
"The minister was advised to develop a policy to look at the numbers that could be sustainable within the fiscal space as of now," Amoth told Spice FM on the health ministry's request for an additional allocation to the Treasury.
"(Treasury said) their 2023/2024 budget was being implemented under tight physical frameworks and with projected revenues not meeting the objectives. They had increased requests for payment of other priorities, including loans," Amoth added.
According to the acting director general of health, the MoH was instructed to "rationalise what we have," which is why the ministry failed to post the doctor interns.
The Council of Governors (CoG) on Tuesday called an extraordinary meeting for this coming Wednesday to discuss the doctors' strike and the application of the court orders issued by the Employment and Labour Relations court last week.
Medical laboratory officers have threatened to join doctors from Nakuru and Meru counties who have taken to the streets to demand that the government listen to them. Starting on Tuesday, the government will have seven days to prepare for the doctors' arrival.
