Dr Ouma Oluga’s father collapsed and died on the road while riding his bicycle.
That shocking incident while young Oluga was still in primary school changed for good the life of the former director of health under the defunct Nairobi Metropolitan Services. Oluga has since returned to Kenyatta National Hospital.
His father would occasionally feel unwell, but the illnesses were “simple issues which could be well handled by a functioning public health system and could have saved his life,” Oluga said.
The public health system in his Rarieda backyard in Siaya county failed his family, robbed him of a father and made life harder for the entire household.
Oluga told the Star during an interview that the experience of his father not only inspired him to be study to be a doctor, but also made him a public-spirited physician.
Talking to the man, you sense a burning passion of activism for making healthcare work and the conviction that it does not have to be an expensive undertaking costing the public an arm and a leg.
The former Nairobi’s director of health under NMS believes that an efficient healthcare system can be repurposed as a tool for achieving dignified living for the public “just as we did it for Nairobians under NMS.”
His passion for turning around public healthcare was honed since childhood.
Growing up, his father, a primary school teacher, would bring home newspapers and often long-serving Attorney General Amos Wako would be in the news.
“So, I always told my father I wanted to be Amos Wako when I grew up,” he said.
But his father had other thoughts. He would tell him to broaden his vision and that “maybe you can have ambition of being a doctor.”
With his father’s death, the advice to change his ambition to be a doctor rose to life. Oluga made up his mind to be a doctor at about 10.
He would then proceed to Maranda High School on a scholarship by the school’s board and later Moi University for medical studies.
It was at Moi where his healthcare activism and leadership unfurled.
He was elected leader of the medical students, university student leader and later part of the leadership of university students in the whole country.
At one point, Oluga was also elected leader of medical students in Africa and then part of the medical students’ leadership globally in charge of Africa.
He figured he would use those platforms to push for positive change in medicine.
After multiple interactions, he said, what became clear was that doctors were fleeing the government payroll in droves, with quitting public facilities seen in medical circles with some sort of prestige.
“Around 2009, out of every graduating eight doctors seven were resigning from government. Most of them cited poor working conditions that impeded the ability of doctors to provide quality care,” he said.
The doctors also cited poor remuneration, lack of equipment to serve patients effectively and save lives, among other issues.
With the clout of a firebrand student leader, Oluga engaged then Medical Services minister Anyang’ Nyong’o, inviting him to a major conference he had organised for practicing doctors, graduate doctors, medical students and other stakeholders in Eldoret.
“The minister was gracious enough to come to the university and he sat with the medical students, graduate doctors and practicing ones for a long conversation that ran till late night,” he said.
Oluga moderated and the attendants poured out their frustrations to the minister.
“He responded where he could, and where he could not I told my colleagues that the minister had heard us,” Oluga said.
The resolutions of this 2009 students meeting with Prof Nyong’o would be the precursor to the creation of the doctors’ union, KMPDU, in 2011 and major strike by doctors in 2014.
In December 2014 when done with his studies and he had properly entered service, his colleagues elected Oluga overwhelmingly to be the secretary general of the union.
“It was the right time to revive the ideals we believed in and pursue them with the new Uhuru-Ruto government.”
The firm stance of the fresh union leadership saw a protracted industrial conflict with the government resulting in one of the longest running strikes in Kenya. Some officials of the union were momentarily jailed.
The outcome was reforms that saw seven out of every eight doctors employed by government stay, not quitting.
Oluga would serve the union up to 2021, setting its structures in place and professionalising its operations.
“I found the union with about 1,000 doctors as members and by the time I left, we had close to 8,000 members who were fully subscribed. We were able to raise more money for operation, professionalised the secretariat and HR practice, making us one of the most formidable doctors' unions regionally and even in the world,” he explained.
In 2021, the Ministry of Health poached him to join Nairobi’s health leadership as a chief officer and later rose the rank of director.
It is his work at City Hall that he is most proud of.
“Remember it was pandemic time and our work showed that better public service that touches our people does not require elevated budgets. It is just leadership that is empathetic and in touch with the people,” Oluga said.
He recounted an encounter he had with 14 health workers in the city who were sick with Covid-19 and who were supposed to go to isolation, and which changed his perspective.
“It was a moment of huge courage for me to access those 14 of our staff and talk to them. One of them asked: ‘Daktari, I’m going into isolation but what will happen to my wife and five children? Who will feed them?’”
Stung, he started lobbying for cash transfers to vulnerable families affected by the disease, generating a list of 326,000 families in the city from which the most deserving got help.
Fronting efficient healthcare as force multiplier in providing public good, he said, no maternal deaths were recorded in Pumwani hospital for a year when he was in charge. HIV prevalence rates in the city declined, KNH was decongested by 40 per cent, among other achievements.
