Dia's point is that a doctor with no drugs to prescribe or equipment to use in discharging his duties is ineffectual. I agree.

Totally agree with @alma in this matter. So how long have they been ineffectual and what have they done about it?
Is the only way to deal with this situation to go on strike and let Kenyans die? So you refuse to treat Kenyans who end up dying because the government's inefficiency and neglect has led to and would continue leading to deaths?

We are not talking about teachers here whose strike would at most lead to inconvenience to students and parents and delay in the former's education. Here the strike leads to DEATH.

I mean have they even thought of suing the government to provide the equipment etc or even tried to seriously lobby it and mount a PR offensive instead? Have they thought about a controlled strike where they attend to the serious cases?

And all that assuming that the strike is genuinely about better facilities and working conditions. Let's not forget that there is money involved which they are quick to point is not the main motive.

Patients die cause of other underlying causes too, like lack of medicine, infrastructure, lack of planning etc etc. Apologies for sounding callous but its the way it is. These things come about cause of inefficiency and corruption. What has happened is that the current tragedies have a face on which we can directly heap the blame. The doctor's strike. @alma, you are taking the "human face" angle, just like the press usually does, they highlight one or two cases and run with it wringing all the possible sympathy and rage from the public - but as a side effect you consign the deeper malaise to the back bench. It is hard to obtain empirical evidence on the number of deaths caused by inefficiency, poor planning and corruption, so naturally we get desensitized from it all.
How would you suggest the doctors get what is due to them? Prostrate themselves at the feet of the extremely arrogant and insensitive Anyang' Nyong'o?
Or can you stand and say that kenyan docs are adequately/reasonably compensated? Are government hospitals adequately/reasonably equipped? We are not a basket economy you know.
A government which lost ...(how many hundreds of millions) through fraud and corruption in the clinix fiasco can't take the moral high ground on this. Your government is messing you up, not the doctors.
I do not know an alternative and feasible way the doctors can make this government listen; therefore I can't condemn them. But I can blame the government. Cause I pay taxes,..and the people who manage the taxes do not pay taxes,..they do not think and actually steal those taxes.

@famooz ...in reply to your disagreeing with me ..doctors have a side in this too. The lack of facilities is a genuine problem, regardless of its use as a reason for the strike. Where you work you expect a desk, chair, working phone, stationery and computer perhaps? Another thing, not all doctors have clinics. I know a few who were my roommates back at the old UoN,..in the early years it is really hard graft. The doc may be sent to a far flung hospital to work there. It takes time to live, work and save enough to even start a practice. Consequently its only fairly senior doctors who have clinics, those recently graduated, anything from 1 to 7 years since qualifying don't have anything. In any case, I think it is a chicken-egg scenario, as in, would the doctor feel compelled to duck the govt hospital and run a clinic or do hours in a private hospital if they were well paid? You pay people well first, then enforce a performance contract.
You have talked of a 'better strategy', which I have highlighted. What strategy is this? How come they haven't thought of it and made it work before? The minister has treated them contemptuously - even refusing to talk! This is a particularly sore point for me. How do you deal with such an entity? And why shouldn't this govt deal with this problem?
Finally let me pose a question that should provoke some thought. If the KE govt was to source foreign doctors, how much do you think that would cost? Because by firing them, Nyong'o is engaging in dangerous brinkmanship

With all the reading these doctors are supposed to be going through, they show a serious lack of political and moral maturity.

When you go on any strike, you don't antagonise the public!

Now they not only antagonize but cause actual harm and even death of the public.

They may scream as much as they wish and cry if they want to, but once a doctor loses the trust of the people, then he's no doctor.

Many people don't trust doctors in normal times especially when you see your bill. They even have a medical practitioners board that has never let go of a rogue doctor. Heck if you complain, they tell you to sign a form and pay 2k to get it. So that drunk doctor always walks.

Then they come here and pretend they are doing this because they love Kenyans.

Total Upus.

They should have talked to Atwoli and found out how strikes are done.

When they say they will go to other countries, heck what are they waiting for? Wazua is full of posts of Kenyans who go to seek better doctors at cheaper rates in India. They are going there because doctors here are inept or just want you to sell all your property for a "chot" meeting.

Doctors on this forum. I'm very bitter and all I did was see accident victims being left to suffer as the "doctors" walked by.

Imagine the pain of the parents, siblings, kin of the people you are refusing to treat just because Anyang is an ass.

I will repeat. Anyang may be the devil himself, but you doctors are simply the worst human beings this world has ever seen. For the love of your, sorry, my tax money, you will let an old woman die.