Hospital deaths expose pain of nurses' strike

Kenya National Union of Nurses and Midwives from various hospitals across the country converged in Nairobi for a strike. [Wilberforce Okwiri,Standard]

At least 11 patients have died at Nakuru Level Five Hospital in the past 24 hours as the nurses’ strike cripple health services across public facilities.

The reported deaths include three neonates at the Newborn Unit, five adults in medical wards and three children in the paediatric ward. An official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the situation has become so desperate that the post-Caesarean section and postnatal wards have been combined because locum nurses brought in to keep the hospital running are unable to cope with the workload.

The claims come against a disturbing national tally of deaths linked to the prolonged disruption of healthcare services. Between Monday and Wednesday this week alone, eight maternal, 16 neonatal and 55 perinatal deaths have been recorded. The nurses’ strike, which began on July 29, has now entered its second month, leaving public hospitals struggling.

At Nakuru Level Five, the crisis could deepen after striking health workers reportedly wrote to medical schools in Nakuru asking them not to release students to provide services at the hospital. The workers argue that students cannot safely be deployed without adequate numbers of qualified nurses to supervise and guide them.

This raises an uncomfortable question: how many more patients must die before the national and county governments treat the strike as an emergency?

The tragedy is the consequences of government delay are not evenly shared. For ordinary Kenyans, a public hospital is often the only realistic option. A mother in labour cannot simply afford a private hospital when a public maternity ward closes. A family with a critically ill child cannot pay for admission, medicine and specialist care. For many households, referral to a private facility is not an alternative—it is a financial death sentence.

Yet the political class rarely faces the same dilemma. Senior government officials have access to private hospitals, comprehensive medical schemes and even treatment abroad.

That is what makes prolonged government inaction particularly difficult to defend. The current crisis is not simply about nurses refusing to work. It is the product of unresolved questions surrounding employment, collective bargaining agreements, career progression and the absorption of Universal Health Coverage workers into permanent and pensionable terms.

Earlier industrial action by health workers also exposed the same fault lines, with unions accusing county governments of failing to address longstanding workforce grievances.

The government has held meetings and promised dialogue. Deputy President Kithure Kindiki recently urged the Council of Governors, the nurses’ union and the Salaries and Remuneration Commission to conclude negotiations and restore services. But patients cannot get well on promises.

Every day negotiations drag on, the burden is transferred from government conference rooms to hospital wards, where doctors, clinical officers, nurses and families confront the consequences. Kenyatta National Hospital has already warned that the strike has increased patient numbers as people who would ordinarily seek treatment in county facilities travel to the national referral hospital, causing congestion and delays.

The Nakuru deaths should therefore not be dismissed as another statistic in an industrial dispute. They are a warning that when governments fail to settle healthcare disputes in time, the punishment is ultimately paid by patients who have no seat at the negotiating table.

Kenya cannot claim to be building universal healthcare while its public hospitals are left without enough nurses to safely care for the sick. The government must urgently settle the dispute, establish the circumstances surrounding every reported hospital death and ensure no patient is left to die simply because those entrusted with running the health system failed to act.