KMPDU has given the government seven days to resolve the 40-day nurses' strike, warning doctors could join the walkout as hospitals report preventable deaths.
Kenya's doctors' union has run out of patience. The Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union (KMPDU) has given the government seven days to resolve the ongoing nurses' strike — and warned that if nothing changes, doctors could be the next group to down their tools.
KMPDU Secretary-General Dr Davji Bhimji Atellah delivered the ultimatum during a press briefing at the union's Nairobi headquarters on Monday, September 7. His message was blunt: the country's hospitals are running on empty, and doctors cannot keep covering for nurses who are not there.
Atellah didn't mince words about what's happening on the ground in public hospitals. With nurses absent for over 40 days, doctors have been left trying to plug gaps in a role they were never meant to fill.
"Doctors cannot do the nursing jobs," Atellah said, pointing to the kind of care only nurses are trained and positioned to give. "The critical care that is offered by nurses cannot be offered by any other cadre. In the ICU, in the wards, in the HDU, only the nurses can offer that type of care."
He said the extended absence of nursing staff was pushing an already-stretched doctor workforce toward a breaking point. "It is increasingly becoming unsafe when doctors, whom we know are in shortage in the country, are overburdened," he said.
For Atellah, this has stopped being an ordinary labour dispute. Essential hospital services have been disrupted, he said, and patients who need nursing care simply cannot access it.
"Essential services have been disrupted. There is no better way to say that patients going to hospital who need nursing care cannot get it, and nursing care is key for any health service to be functional," Atellah said.
He described public hospitals as now operating at bare minimum, with the disruption contributing to preventable complications and deaths — including among children. The scale of that toll has begun to surface in reporting: between August 31 and September 2 alone, health professional associations recorded 79 deaths nationally, comprising eight maternal deaths, 16 neonatal deaths, and 55 perinatal deaths.
"Today we have 40 days in our public hospitals across the country that are constrained," Atellah said. "It is increasingly becoming unsafe when doctors... are overburdened."
Atellah's frustration was aimed squarely at the government's handling of the standoff. Forty days into the strike, he argued, there is no excuse for treating the health system as though it is functioning normally.
"The government of the day cannot continue to assume things are normal when a key component of the health system has been on strike for over 40 days," he said.
He also invoked the legal weight of past agreements, arguing that commitments the government has already signed with health workers — and deposited in court — carry the force of court orders and should be honoured accordingly. "The agreements that are signed and that are deposited in court are court orders and need to be implemented," Atellah said.
Beyond solidarity with striking nurses, KMPDU is also nursing its own frustrations. Atellah revealed that doctors were promised a payslip adjustment set to take effect in August — a commitment that has not been honoured.
"We were promised that the adjustment of payslip for doctors was to be done in the month of August, which has not been done yet," he said, adding that the union hopes the matter will finally be resolved in September.
The nurses' strike, now in its sixth week, traces back to a Collective Bargaining Agreement first negotiated ahead of the 2017 General Election — one that, according to KMPDU, has never been fully implemented. Nurses walked out in late July 2026 after fresh negotiations over the outstanding CBA provisions collapsed.
About a week before KMPDU's ultimatum, Council of Governors Chair Ahmed Abdullahi publicly urged striking nurses to return to work, saying governors remained open to continuing negotiations. Abdullahi noted that talks with nurses had actually been underway when the union called the strike — a timing issue that has since complicated efforts to reach a resolution. Nurses, for their part, have continued pushing for full implementation of the CBA's outstanding provisions.
With KMPDU's seven-day deadline in motion, the pressure on the national and county governments has sharpened considerably. A doctors' walkout on top of the ongoing nurses' strike would leave Kenya's public hospitals facing a far deeper crisis — one where two of the health system's core pillars are simultaneously absent.
For now, the ultimatum stands as a warning shot: resolve the nurses' dispute within a week, or risk a health workforce crisis far bigger than the one already unfolding.