Some health facilities in the country run by medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), or MSF, are overstretched due to the current crises in health.
The organisation says the ongoing nurses’ strike, which followed the 100-day doctors’ strike, and now the cholera outbreak should push the government to restore crucial health services across the country.
MSF works in Homa Bay, Nairobi, Mombasa and Embu counties and at the Dadaab refugee camp.
“It is crucial that all parties work on a solution to restore access to emergency and life-saving care, and referral services,” said the MSF head of mission in Kenya, Abubakr Bashir Bakri, in a statement on Wednesday.
Mr Bakri said the response to the cholera outbreak has also suffered as there are no nurses working in nearly all public facilities.
The Health ministry has formed a national task force to handle cholera cases in a raft of measures aimed at containing the infectious disease that has affected more than 300 people since May.
The government has also directed counties to ban food hawking and inspect all hotels in 21 days and cancelled the medical certificates of all food handlers.
Thousands of patients have been suffering following the nurses’ strike, which entered its sixth week last Saturday.
Mr Bakri said that during the doctors’ strike, MSF covered the high costs of intensive care in private facilities for severely ill patients.
