The Government on Friday announced that it had deployed doctors in the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) to handle emergency cases at the Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH).
The move to dispatch the KDF soldiers to KNH was compelled by the decision of 290 medical specialists to join the ongoing doctors and nurses strike.
The military doctors are said to have arrived at the hospital at around midday and have been making rounds to various departments.
The hospital Deputy Director of Clinical Services Bernard Githae confirmed their arrival saying, "we want to save lives."
Health workers and nurses downed their tools on Monday before the specialists joined them on Thursday thus completely paralysing services at the National Hospital leaving no doctors to handle emergency cases.
President Uhuru Kenyatta on Friday, during his tour in the Rift Valley, urged striking doctors to go back to work as they negotiate a deal.
"I am very hopeful that by the end of the day we should have an agreement. We need to work together because we do not want Kenyans to suffer," Kenyatta stated.
Meanwhile, efforts by senior officials in the Ministry of Health to convince the health workers to go back to work have failed as the union officials insist on their demands which, among other things, call for a 130 per cent salary increment for the lowest cadre of medics from a maximum of Sh149,880 to Sh342,770.
If their demands are met, the highest job cadre - Group T - will move from a maximum of Sh538,980 to Sh946,00 which is a 75 percent pay rise.
The payment terms are part of a Collective Bargaining Agreement(CBA) that was signed between health workers and the government three years ago.
