Kenya: Nurses Want Sack Letters Withdrawn

NURSES' representatives yesterday said they will resume talks with the government only if letters sacking striking nurses are revoked.

The Kenya Health Professional Society secretary general Moses Lore said he is disturbed with the Medical Services minister's insistence that 25,000 nurses remain sacked even after a Wednesday meeting agreed to rescind the decision.

"On our part we agreed that nurses will go back to work as negotiations go on. The letters sacking striking nurses have been met with defiance in some areas where nurses continued to stay out of work stations,"said Lore.

While some nurses have gone back to work as a result of the letters, others are traumatized for receiving the letters, Lore said. "Today's meeting will not take off until the issue of the letters terminating service is clarified," Lore said adding that they will go to the meeting but demand for the withdrawal of the letters. He said the matter has become complicated after Medical Services minister Anyang' Nyong'o sent mixed signals on a meeting that had already agreed on a return to work formula.

As the strike continued, a terrorist blast on Saturday night at Nairobi's Machakos Country bus terminus saw the injured rushed to the Kenyatta National Hospital. At the hospital, the personnel of mainly student nurses were mobilized to attend to the blast victims. The head of clinical medicine services at KNH, Simeon Monda said all staff were mobilized to attend to the emergency situation.

He failed to respond to whether there are striking nurses who turned up for work saying, "let us address the issue at hand." But the hospital's PRO manager, Simon Ithai said nurses at KNH have not been on the strike. "Everybody has been working," Ithai said. Some of those who attended to the injured at KNH were however students from the Kenya Medical Training College who said nurses at the hospital have also been on strike. The strike has according to reports resulted to deaths of patients who arrived in public hospitals where they found nobody to attend to them.