Force politicians to visit public hospitals

All citizens are supposed to receive equal treatment, access same level of services and feel valued. Over a week ago, this basic tenet was challenged when the news of Dr Stephen Mogusu’s death as result of Covid-19 hit the country. While in life not many people may have known of the 28-year-old doctor, his death brought him to public recognition and discourse.

Dr Mogusu was not the first of Kenya’s frontline workers to die because of Covid-19, which brought to light the dangers that health workers are exposed to in their efforts to save lives during the ongoing pandemic. However, the circumstances surrounding his death raised fundamentally questions about the nature of our society and the state of health care.

For several years now, Kenya’s doctors and other health personnel have raised concerns about the quality of their working environment and the need for meaningful investment in the sector. Unfortunately, their cry has been drowned in the turf wars pitting national and county governments. In certain instances, it has been dismissed as the usual push by workers for unrealistic employment terms and conditions. Invariably the response has been that either the country is too broke to afford what is being asked for or that the strike is illegal and as such should be called off.

Reports that the doctor may not have been paid for several months before his death and the subsequent denials point to a bigger problem of management of public workforce and their remuneration. The calls for a Health Commission is legitimate but alone may not address this basic issue.

When the Salaries and Remuneration Commission was established, it was anticipated that remuneration in the public sector would be harmonised so that there is equal pay for equal work. In addition, a review was to be periodically undertaken with a view to ensuring that the payments are not jus equitable but fair considering the conditions of the country. A decade later, there is continued cry from employees that the commission has not addressed their basic pay complaints to justify its continued existence.

The next point of contention relates to access to heath care. A huge debate arose last week on some social media platform as to whether health is a public or private good. Many commentators brought their various disciplines to weigh in on the issue. Without attempting to rehash their core arguments, the fundamental issue is whether every Kenyan can enjoy their constitutional right to health care. Members of the medical profession pointed out the fallacy of a society where those who provide the service to the country are themselves unable to afford the same service when they need it as happened to Dr Mogusu. On the other hand, some politicians argued that it is fellow doctors who failed their colleague for refusing to treat him until he paid. The real debate may be lost in this narrative. The issue must be if a doctor cannot afford the cost of medical care, is that still a right that will be enjoyed by ordinary citizens, since doctors are by their training part of the top echelons of society. A policy regime that cannot guarantee access to health services to professionals in society speaks about huge inequalities since ordinary citizens would not even dream of the same.

The country must move away from occasional anger to finding long-term solutions to the real challenges that bedevil it so that it can move to an equal society, where citizens are guaranteed quality services by virtue of paying taxes rather than status. There is conversation about compelling public servants, including politicians, to consume the services they oversee. It would ensure that such services are improved and secondly made affordable to all public servants.

As a friend argued on a public forum this past week, the continued existence of preferential treatment, such as their VIP lifts, and other such arrangements makes it possible for the inequality to be entrenched in the country since the politicians and policy makers get shielded from the reality that face many Kenyans be their ordinary citizens or ordinary public servants such as Dr Mogusu.