On November 22, 2018, public hospitals faced the prospect of fresh disruption after nurses and clinical officers separately threatened strike action over pay, allowances and recognition of their work by the National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF).
The Kenya National Union of Nurses said its members would stop work from December 10 unless a deal reached after a five-month strike the previous year was fully implemented. The union said the agreement signed on November 2, last year with the national government and county governments included a nursing services allowance to be phased in over three years, while the uniform allowance was to rise by Sh5,000 a year from July 2018.
In a notice dated November 19, union secretary general Seth Panyako said repeated attempts to secure a meeting with the relevant offices had not produced any meaningful response. He said the union had written several times to press for implementation of the deal.
Clinical officers also moved to escalate their dispute, saying they would boycott work within two weeks unless NHIF recognised their prescriptions for procedures such as CT scans and X-rays. The Kenya Union of Clinical Officers (Kuco) said in a letter to NHIF that it was unhappy with the insurer’s refusal to acknowledge their role.
Kuco secretary general George Gibore said the union would not accept a requirement that its members register with the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Board. He said NHIF was preventing clinical officers from referring patients for imaging and was also imposing limits on pre-authorisation for procedures including cataract surgery and caesarean section.
“The union has unanimously resolved to demand that the NHIF offers a written undertaking to accredit facilities registered by the Clinical Officers’ Council as directed by the Ministry of Health and be allowed to practice and serve NHIF accredited patients as per the scope of their training, qualification and scope of service,” said Mr Gibore in the strike notice.
The warning raised the risk of pressure on already stretched public health facilities if the disputes were not resolved quickly.
