Doctor Brain drain driving Nairobians to an early grave.

Doctor Brain drain driving Nairobians to an early grave.

By Abuta Ogeto

The rate at which doctors are leaving the country, after graduation or after a short stint at the Kenyan hospitals is really worrying. This disheartening revelation comes at a time when the medical fraternity is agitating for better terms of service with the government. Having staged many protests, seeing patients die for lack of facilities and the meager pay, the medics can no longer stomach it. Out we go, they seem to have decided.

Dr Charles Wambulwa, a former Starehe boy, was happy to be attached to Kenyatta National Hospital under his almer mater’s career development programme. But by the end of his volunteer experience while in high school, he had to think otherwise. This follows the ugly incidents where patients were not being attended to for lack of facilities as his mentor put it. Dr. Charles recalls how a middle aged patient lay on a cold floor for four days, dehydrated and unattended. The senior staff cited lack of beds with most patients then sharing beds. He swore never to be a doctor!

He later relocated to Howard University to pursue Medicine and has been working there ever since he completed his medical degree. The emergency physician at Howard University in Canada yearns to give back to his Kenyan people but can’t bear the situation where his patients die from treatable diseases because of lack of equipment. Worse still, due to bed sharing where a patient can be treated of a disease but leave the hospital with another one. Dr Wambulwa claims that it is demoralizing for him to work under the same conditions every day.

While volunteering at Kakamega General Hospital, Dr. Wambulwa found it the filthiest. He wondered how his colleagues handle such cases given the predisposition to hygiene related diseases.

Many Kenyan doctors are working abroad according to the Centre for Global Development survey last year. In the report, over 4500 medics of Kenyan origin are working in the UK, US, Spain, Belgium, Australia among other western countries. The number is double the doctors working in East Africa’s Leading Referral Hospitals – KNH and Moi Referral Hospitals. These statistics make Kenya rank among the top five leading doctor exporting countries in Africa.

The pinch of doctor brain drain is felt when WHO’s doctor to people ratio is way above Kenya’s 36 doctors per 100,000 people as the National Service Provision Assessment 2010 report puts it.

Brain drain can also occur when one changes profession. Daniel Ondiek was a man with a burning desire to heal the sick on graduating from Nairobi University. But after experiences challenges and meager pay, he left for the US for a piloting course that took him five years. Today, he flies planes at Kenya Airways earning 1 million monthly. He can’t compare that with the 30,000 to 50,000 that medical interns get as monthly allowances. The doctor turned pilot pities doctors working in Kenya. “They are given peanuts for a donkey’s work,” he adds.

Tom Mboya, a final year Medical Student is not amused by the way medical professionals change occupations. “When Prof. Sam Ongeri plunges into politics yet he is one of the best paediatricians in the country, we have a reason to wonder. When Prof. George Magoha becomes the administrator of a university, then you realize we have been robbed another top urologist and consultant,” the former student leader at Kenyatta University says.

In another study on The Cost of Health Professionals’ Brain Drain in Kenya by Joses Kirigia found out that Kenya loses around 50 million when a doctor leaves for greener pastures elsewhere. The journal that was published by BMC Health Services Research calculated the cost of educating a doctor – 6 million and subjected it to an assumed 7% interest rate for every medic who emigrates by age 30.

At the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Board desk, Ms Sara Were expresses fear due to the dwindling number of doctor applying for the resident status certificate. It implies an urge to leave for majuu where termed are better. Currently, the board has a list of about 6,300 registered medical doctors.

Dr Karanja, a gynecologist and obstetrics consultant who heads Kenyatta University Health Unit says that doctors’ shortage is a major cause for the many deaths in hospitals and the poor healthcare industry services.

Most doctors and medical students cited equipment and pay as the major demotivators. “Babies die because there are no incubators, accident victims die because there are no blood banks, and other patients die because theatres are so few or lacking machines. To compound a worse situation, doctors are now leaving, complains Dr. Victor Ng’ani who works at Mater Hospital. With this rate, we shall be reduced to supervising patient deaths.

Dr. Abdi Mohamed runs a private clinic.  He complains of doctors being reduced to clerical officer who keep referring patients for diseases they can treat. “Lack of X ray, for instance, may make me refer a patient yet I can treat the condition! These are some of the things that make most of us quit from the government after the three year internship,” Dr Abdi poses.

Dr. Matilda Ong’ondi had to leave for the UK after her internship at KNH. “Going home with that thought of death being preventable every other day can be very disheartening. To avoid much trauma, or depression, I had to look for an exit strategy,” the internal medicine specialist told me.