Kenya's doctors threatened to join nurses' strike over unsustainable workload—now ended
Kenya's doctors' union threatened to join a nurses' strike that lasted 43 days over unsustainable workloads and a 2017 unimplemented collective bargaining agreement. The strike ended on September 9, 2026, with a return-t
Doctors in Kenya threatened to walk off the job alongside striking nurses, citing unbearable workloads as the country's healthcare system buckled under the industrial action that began on July 29, 2026.
Dr. Davji Bhimji Atellah, secretary-general of the Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union, told reporters Tuesday that doctors were being forced to perform nursing duties in hospitals already dealing with chronic staff shortages. \"We cannot do the nursing jobs,\" he said, adding that effective healthcare requires teamwork that the current crisis has made impossible.
The nurses, who ended their strike on September 9, 2026, after 43 days, were demanding implementation of a collective bargaining agreement signed in 2017 following a six-month strike. The agreement remained unimplemented due to what the government called budgetary constraints — a claim that rang hollow to healthcare workers who watched colleagues leave for overseas posts every week.
The exodus behind the emergency
About 4,000 doctors and nurses leave Kenya every year, according to Ouma Oluga, former secretary general of the Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union. The drain is visible in credential-processing data: Kenya accounts for 6.5 percent of all African nurses applying for VisaScreen certification to work in the United States — placing it first in Africa and third globally after the Philippines and Canada, according to TruMerit.
President William Ruto has acknowledged the government cannot absorb the workforce it trains. Kenya produces roughly 1 million qualified workers annually but creates jobs for only 200,000, he admitted last year. Rather than fight the exodus, Ruto has embraced labor export, negotiating bilateral agreements with the UK, Germany, Austria, and Saudi Arabia to facilitate what he calls \"safe and orderly labor migration.\"
Under the UK-Kenya bilateral agreement signed in July 2021, Kenya pledged to send 20,000 nurses to NHS hospitals. By April 2024, just 280 had arrived, with 200 more awaiting placement, according to Kenya's Ministry of Health. The slow pace reflects less a lack of willing emigrants than bottlenecks in visa processing, NMC registration, and employer onboarding.
Meanwhile, public hospitals had been left with skeleton staff. Nurses who remained worked grueling shifts with inadequate supplies. The 2017 collective bargaining agreement they were striking over promised better pay, staffing ratios, and working conditions — commitments the government had ignored for seven years.
What comes next
The doctors' union had threatened a strike if the government did not resolve the underlying issues within seven days of the nurses' action. The return-to-work agreement signed on September 9 provided a 45-day window for negotiations on comprehensive implementation of the collective bargaining agreement, with county governments committing to raise allowances and absorb staff onto permanent terms.
The government's handling of the healthcare crisis underscores the conditions that have driven thousands to seek opportunities abroad — and the widening gap between what Kenya's health system needs and what it can afford to keep.
