More than 100 patients were reported to have escaped yesterday from the Mathari Mental Hospital after doctors and nurses joined in the ongoing nationwide health workers’ strike.
Motorists and pedestrians along the Thika Superhighway reported seeing the mentally challenged patients jump over the hospital’s perimeter fence.
Nairobi Police Commander Japheth Koome said police had by last night arrested dozens of the mentally challenged patients who had escaped.
More than 4,000 doctors in public health facilities went on strike yesterday, demanding salary increments of up to 300 per cent.
They want the government to effect the collective bargaining agreement they signed with the Health ministry in June 2013.
The agreement directs that a medical intern straight from university earns Sh325,000 every month, up from Sh127,000 today.
The highest paid doctor would see their salary rise from Sh540,000 to about Sh946,000.
Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists’ Union secretary general Dr Ouma Oluga said they will not resume work until they are paid the new salaries, plus arrears.
“We have endured indignity by people who don’t know [what] classrooms looks like,” he said yesterday.
Oluga was joined by the union’s national officials and more than 200 doctors, mostly medical interns.
They later marched from the Nairobi Public Service Club and demonstrated outside the Health ministry and later at the Treasury.
The strike, and that of nurses, which also began yesterday, paralysed services in most of the 2,700 public hospitals countrywide. The Kenyatta National Hospital and the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital were also affected.
The Health ministry officials were also expected to meet the KMPDU officials yesterday to try and end the strike.
Kenyan doctors first went on strike in 2011, after which the government and the union formed a team that finalised the CBA in 2013.
The government had promised to effect the agreement within six months, but Oluga said doctors were taken round in circles for three years.
“We are united for nothing other than better healthcare in this country. To the mwananchi who is suffering, your government does not care about your welfare,” he said.
The union sued the government at the Labour Court early this year.