KUCO Chairperson Peterson Wachira [Photo: People Daily]
Kenya Union of Clinical Officers Chairperson (KUCO) Peterson Wachira says Kenya’s public health sector is on the verge of collapsing, as a result of failure to address the main challenge faced by medics which is unemployment.
Speaking today, Wachira noted that the health sector is facing a human resource crisis yet the country has qualified health workers who are jobless.
According to the chairperson, despite experiencing a shortage of health workers, the government has remained adamant about addressing the shortage by employing more medics.
He added that the country is losing the most experienced health personnel to other countries because they have been neglected.
“We have a severe shortage of health workers amidst a rising number of unemployment,” said Wachira.
“We have about 4,000 unemployed doctors who are trained, 9,000 clinical officers who are jobless, we have about 20,000 nurses who are unemployed.”
On a different note, Wachira said the working environment for health workers is toxic, pushing some of them into mental anguish.
“We have reached a point where some of the health officers cannot use their NHIF to access the same services that they offer and that is why we are seeing suicide cases.”
According to KUCO, the country lacks a harmonized way of managing health human resources in an effective manner.
A newsmaker, reporter and anchor at Pearl Radio, Ndalilah Sharon is witty and savvy.
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