Nairobi Hospital Doctors Threaten to Down Tools as Boardroom Wars Intensify
Members of the Kenya Hospital Association (KHA) have issued a statement announcing that they would impair operations in Nairobi Hospital this morning until the hospital’s board resigns.
The association has accused the Nairobi Hospital Board of Directors, consisting of 13 members, of poor leadership and mismanagement of assets, citing the need to restore financial sanity in the institution. The statement also requests members of the association to attend a general meeting on Wednesday 2:30 pm, which will be convened at the Radisson Blu Hotel in Upper Hill, Nairobi. The Nairobi Hospital Board led by Dr. Chris Bichage denied these allegations and and termed them attempts to tarnish the hospital’s reputation and sabotage its operations. “The general public is hereby informed that the Nairobi Hospital admitting staff association(doctors) will by midnight today, Monday, September 16, 2024, down tools, until the incumbent board of directors resigns,” said KHA in a statement.
“The general public is therefore notified that there will be no more new admissions in the Nairobi Hospital,” the notice continues.
The hospital’s management has countered the statement this morning, saying that operations at the hospital will continue unabated and urged members of the public to ignore those calling for a strike.
“We would like to assure the general public that our operations are going on smoothly. We urge our partners and stakeholders to ignore reports going around in sections of the media about an impending strike by our doctors,” the Nairobi Hospital said on the X (formerly Twitter) platform this morning.
Last month, the Nairobi Hospital directors secured a court order barring members of the KHA from demanding their expulsion from thr board. The association was restricted from disseminating these concerns on social media as well as in public meetings.
The board’s chairman Dr. Bichage had filed a lawsuit against the association, naming all 363 members of KHA as defendants in the case. The court order warned that if KHA violated its directives, penal consequences would be assured.
KHA remains resolute in its demands to expel Bichage and his board claiming that they failed in their fiduciary responsibility. They claim that the board had intended to use Nairobi Hospital’s assets as collateral for a KSh 2 billion loan from an offshore lender without informing the association.
The board denied this allegation stating that all expenses the hospital had incurred were viably covered by its internal revenue sources and such a loan was never sought to be obtained.
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