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Doctors at public hospitals in Kenya have been on strike for more than a month. They want better pay and benefits. The government says it can't afford either. NPR's Eyder Peralta visited one hospital with no doctors on duty.
EYDER PERALTA, BYLINE: The halls of Kiambu County Hospital are bare. This is normally a bustling place, but today, entire wings of it are closed. It's just the emergency room that is scattered with patients - moms with babies languidly sitting on metal chairs...
(SOUNDBITE OF BABY CRYING)
PERALTA: ...Men with broken bones, some with serious injuries just hoping to be treated. The nurses are not on strike, so they're doing whatever they can. But if anyone needs complicated care and they can't afford a private hospital, they're out of luck. The only doctor I find is at the end of another long hallway.
DAVID KARIUKI: My name is Dr. Kariuki.
PERALTA: David Kariuki - he's on strike, but he's performing the administrative part of his job.
KARIUKI: The current strike is about better working conditions for doctors, especially those working within the public health sector.
PERALTA: A doctor right out of school in Kenya, for example, makes about $10,000 a year in the public health system, so many are lured abroad or into the private hospitals that regular Kenyans can't afford.
KARIUKI: Of course the public health system continues to be strained because you have fewer doctors to see a growing population. So everyone would get overworked, and probably even stress increases for the individual doctors.
PERALTA: For a population of nearly 50 million, Kenya has only 5,000 doctors in the public sector. A nurse walks me from Kariuki's office to the emergency room, where I find Masa Mawili.
MASA MAWILI: (Foreign language spoken).
PERALTA: He says he came to the hospital because his foot is swollen. He shows me. His foot hardly fits into his sandal, and the swelling extends to his calf.
MAWILI: (Foreign language spoken).
PERALTA: He's already seen the nurses, but they couldn't tell him what's wrong with his foot. So now he sits and waits for a doctor who may never arrive.
Yesterday, President Uhuru Kenyatta met with the doctors union, and his government put out an offer. Some doctors would get a more than 100 percent raise, others significantly less. The doctors want the 300 percent raise that the government agreed to in 2013.
PAUL KAGIRI: Whatever they are asking is very, very, very high.
PERALTA: That's Paul Kagiri. His son got the help he needed at the hospital today, but he says the doctors need to go back to work. The government can't afford to pay them, and there's already been deaths and births reported outside of hospitals. Right now, he says, it's time to think about the wanjiku, the ordinary people.
KAGIRI: Wanjiku right now is suffering a lot. And instead of wanjiku suffering, why not them to give back to the public whatever you have?
PERALTA: Doctors argue it's time for the government to give. The government's offer would cost the country $135 million, so the government says it can't afford to do more. Still, Kenya is so famously corrupt that the offer would cost less than what the government lost in a recent graft scandal involving the Ministry of Health. Eyder Peralta, NPR News, Nairobi.