Sign, strike, repeat: Why Kenya’s health workers keep downing tools
By Willow Health, August 25, 2026A nationwide strike by 7,800 unpaid health workers reopens a decades-old fight over broken agreements, and one expert says the real fault line runs deeper, into how doctors are trained.
The strike, called on July 20, 2026, by the Health Unions Caucus, demands the permanent employment of 7,800 health workers on pensionable terms, drawing in nearly every cadre of health worker and paralysing operations countrywide.
The human cost is not confined to individual stories witnessed at the bedside. A retrospective study published in BMC Health Services Research, comparing women pregnant during Kenya’s 2017 health worker strikes with a control group pregnant the following year, found that those pregnant during the strikes were less likely to receive WHO-recommended maternal and child health services.
Separately, a 2022 study published in the Journal of Health Economics by Willa Friedman and Anthony Keats, analysing Demographic and Health Survey data, found that children born during hospital strikes in Kenya faced a significantly higher probability of neonatal death, a finding replicated using data from two Nairobi informal settlements – underscoring how quickly gaps in staffing can turn into loss of life for the most vulnerable patients.
Some medics report to work as some ‘have an attachment to their patients’
At Mama Lucy Hospital, the signs of a working facility are visible even mid-strike. On a hot Wednesday midday in early August, about 50 patients queued for service at the three registration booths near the entrance, while health workers in neatly pressed and starched scrubs, some with stethoscopes, walked the corridors between offices and consultation rooms. Dr Nehemiah Langat, the hospital’s Medical Superintendent, downplayed the strike’s impact, saying it was under control.
While services are not at their optimum, he said, some staff are reporting to work because some “have an attachment to their patients.” He estimated the hospital was working at 80 per cent capacity, with locum staff, whom he said have all along been working at the hospital, filling gaps rather than being freshly hired because of the strike.
Dr Langat said the renal unit had been hit hardest, leaving the few staff who remained overworked, though he added: “But our renal machines are all working, so there is nothing to worry about.” He noted that health workers at Mama Lucy face the same challenges seen nationally. “If the government addresses these issues once and for all, it will really help to focus on delivering health services. Last year, we had many strikes,” he said.
The strike is being led by unions including the Kenya National Union of Medical Laboratory Officers, the Kenya Union of Clinical Officers (KUCO), the Kenya Environment Health and Public Health Practitioners Union (KEHPHPU) and the Kenya National Union of Nutritionists and Dietitians (KUNAD), among others. At its core is a demand that county governments absorb the 7,800 workers on permanent and pensionable terms, a dispute that has already paralysed operations in public health facilities countrywide.
For a country where health worker strikes have become, in the words of union officials, “a thing of normalcy,” the current stand-off follows a familiar pattern: workers walk out, a return-to-work formula is signed, and then the agreement is left unimplemented until the next strike forces the issue back onto the table.
In 2017, Kenya experienced 150 days of health workers’ strike
Geoffrey Gibore, General Secretary of the Kenya Union of Clinical Officers, argues that this cycle stems from government inaction rather than any lack of goodwill at the negotiating table. “We go on strike, we agree, sign a return-to-work formula, which provides a clear matrix on how to implement all the issues that you have been fighting about. So unfortunately, after that, the employer reneges on their responsibility to implement,” he said.
That pattern is not new. In 2017, Kenya experienced its longest health worker strike on record, when nurses stayed off duty for 150 days before the dispute was resolved on November 2, 2017, with an agreement on a Ksh10,000 increment in nursing service allowance and a Ksh15,000 uniform allowance, both to be paid in three tranches. Doctors, meanwhile, staged a 100-day strike that same year, which ended on March 2, 2017, after they secured a significant rise in allowances, including the conversion of the Emergency Call Allowance into a standardised Doctors Allowance, along with a new Medical Risk Allowance.
Postgraduate students leaving counties short of medical expertise
The solution at the time was to train Master of Medicine (M.Med) students at Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH), a straightforward arrangement when the University of Nairobi was the only institution producing doctors. Over time, however, self-sponsored students swelled the numbers, and the arrival of devolution complicated matters further: doctors employed by county governments began enrolling for postgraduate training while technically working at KNH, without being its employees.
Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital (MTRH) has faced a similar dynamic, training and deploying postgraduate students in ways that leave counties short of the medical expertise they need. “Who is supposed to promote them? KNH? The county governments? Or the Ministry of Health?” Prof Rogo asked, pointing to this confusion as one of the underlying causes of Kenya’s recurring doctors’ strikes.
As the current strike continues, with no clear timeline for resolution, both diagnoses, broken agreements and structural confusion in training point to the same reality: without credible enforcement mechanisms and clearer administrative accountability, Kenya’s health sector is likely to keep returning to the cycle of walkouts that has defined it for nearly a decade.