A salary increase for doctors in Kenya is attracting medics back to the country’s public health service — and helping to reverse their migration to Southern African countries.
The pay rise, announced by Kenya’s Ministry of Health in February, saw a newly employed intern’s monthly salary increase to R4020, from just R1760, and that of a general practitioner to R8720, from R2450.
An estimated 500 to 1000 Kenyan doctors, according to the Kenya Medical Association (KMA), currently work in Southern Africa countries — especially Botswana and Namibia — many of them having left Kenya after an abortive pay strike in the mid-1990s.
Before the salary increase this year, Kenyan doctors had been quitting the public sector in droves for the private sector and greener pastures abroad, citing poor pay, deplorable working conditions and lack of training opportunities.
According to the KMA, only 600, or one-tenth, of Kenya’s estimated 6000 doctors remained in the public sector at the beginning of the year. Government health facilities, which charge nominal fees, serve at least 80% of Kenya’s 30-million-plus population.
In July last year, owing to the deteriorating staffing situation in the public health sector, KMA petitioned the government to increase a junior doctor’s pay to R15 000, which it said was the minimum required to make the public sector competitive.
The organisation argued that it was self-defeating for the government to train doctors at a cost of R125 000 a year per student, only to lose them to other countries.
The KMA proposal followed revelations in the Kenyan Parliament by Minister for Medical Services Maalim Mohammed in the same month that only 10 doctors had applied for jobs with the Ministry of Health after more than 100 vacancies had been advertised.
Though falling below what the profession had requested, the government pay rise in February has put government doctors at the same pay level as those in private hospitals in Nairobi, long considered the best payers in the profession in Kenya, and on about the same scale as those of other Southern African health ministries.
According to a Kenyan health ministry official, who spoke to the Mail & Guardian on condition of anonymity, the new attractiveness of the public sector has put Kenya’s ministry in an unfamiliar quandary — it has more doctors wanting to join it than money to pay them.
A month ago, the awkward situation of health ministry was graphically illustrated when it emerged that it had failed to absorb 168 medicine, dentistry and pharmacy interns because of a lack of funds.
Two weeks ago, in a face-saving move, the ministry’s Permanent Secretary, Professor Julius Meme, announced that the ministry had resolved the issue of the interns and that they had been posted to various hospitals around the country.