About 2,300 union members strike doctors have worked in the East African country after on Monday (5/12/2011) the local government said it could not meet the demands of physicians who requested a salary increase of 300 percent.
More than 600 physicians complete with white coat lined up on Wednesday (7/12/2011) in downtown Nairobi to the Treasury building, waving placards and shouting slogans supporting the strike. They wore blue ribbons on his jacket as a sign of solidarity with their suffering.
"The strike will continue until the government responded to our voices," said Boniface Chitayi, secretary general of the union doctors Kenya, Medical Practitioners and Dentists Union (MPDU), as reported by Reuters on Wednesday (12/14/2011).
The protest is the latest in a series of industrial policies that have gripped Kenya in recent months. Elementary school teachers, university lecturers and nurses angered by the rising cost of living to finally go on strike, but later returned to work after reaching an agreement with the state.
The doctors say they get an average of 35,000 shillings (about USD 3.5 million) per month and demanding higher pay because of the cost of living soar. Annual inflation reached almost 20 percent in November 2011 that has been rising for 13 consecutive months.
The doctors even still want to continue the strike for a week and ignore the government's request to return to work and reverse the earlier decision to end the industrial action.
Many patients eventually displaced by the attending physicians who are not able to handle all incoming patients.
"I have been here all day I bring my child for surgery to treat stomach aches. But he has not noticed," said Anne Nduta (32 years) who was carrying her child aged 6 years in the largest public hospitals in the country, Kenyatta National Hospital.
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