Nurses Vow To Continue Strike

From the Editor, EDIT-UIS@geo2.poptel.org.uk, 1 December 1997

NAIROBI, Kenya, - Nurses countrywide vowed Monday to continue with their strike despite a government order Sunday asking them to resume work.

Two Nairobi branch coordinators of the four-day-old strike, Joshua Maranga and J.K. Muiruri, said they will only abandon the strike after their demands are adequately addressed.

Nurses all over the country have vowed to continue with the strike despite threats issued by the government yesterday (Sunday) afternoon, they said.

The Kenya Medical Association (KMA) has thrown its weight behind the nurses asking the government to address their grievances immediately.

The association's chairman, Dr. Khama Rogo, accussed the government of making utterances that aggravated the crisis rather than solving it.

He warned that doctors may be forced to review their position if the impasse over the nurses' grievances was not solved urgently.

He said KMA will soon meet the nurses to discuss matters of common interest. He did not elaborate.

Nurses have genuine grievances and they have followed the right procedure. The ministry of health must therefore address the matter accordingly and stop pretending that the striking nurses can be replaced by doctors, Rogo said.

He said doctors were impotent without nurses, since they did very little in hospitals while most of the work is done on 24-hour basis by nurses.

As the strike continued to bite, death continued to stalk public health institutions all over the country with several more deaths reported in district and provincial hospitals, in addition to the 23 reported on Sunday.

Dead bodies remained uncollected and patients only receive assistance from relatives.

The Editor

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