DOCTORS in Kenya are continuing to resist local government attempts to attack their right to strike by threatening sackings.  

The medical professionals in the country have been taking industrial action for a month over issues including pay and the failure to hire trainee doctors, who cannot qualify without getting an intern position.

Clinical officers, who provide outpatient services, have also joined the strikes.

Patients have been forced to attend expensive private hospitals or delay treatment due to the action.

Doctors’ union KMPDU secretary-general Davji Bhimji said that the medics are aware of the problems the strike is causing but argued that industrial action is necessary “to help the public get quality healthcare” in the long run, as their working conditions and the lack of equipment mean they cannot treat patients properly.

“Sometimes we are just there to supervise death,” he told the BBC.

Mr Bhimji accused the government of not being “concerned about the services that we offer, otherwise they would be sitting down and discussing” the issues.

Kenya Union of Clinical Officers chairman Peterson Wachira said: “The government is not going to give anything without a fight.”

President William Ruto has asked the striking doctors to return to work and agree to a government offer to pay salary arrears to doctors and hire more interns, saying the country must “live according to our means.”

The offer followed negotiations, including court-mandated talks, but the doctors rejected it, saying the pay being offered to interns amounted to a cut of pay that had been agreed in a 2017 deal.

The government set the new figure at $540 (£430) a month, but the union say $1,600 (£1,285) had been agreed for pay and allowances in the deal.

Authorities have been unable to hire trainee doctors as they say there is not enough money to pay all prospective interns.

Shirley Ogalo, a dental surgeon who is waiting to be hired, said that graduating was a very nice moment “but now I’m fighting.”

“You see your [friends] who did other courses: they are flourishing,” she told the BBC.

“Some have started families. It’s depressing, it gives you a lot of frustration.”

County governments, which are responsible for most of the health functions, have threatened to sack the doctors.

A public hospital in Nairobi announced last week that it was laying off more than 100 doctors participating in the strike.