The country can ill afford yet another strike by medical staff

A nationwide nurses' strike began yesterday in parts of the country following complaints the Government had reneged on a signed return-to-work formula, pending the implementation of a 2013 Comprehensive Bargaining Agreement (CBA). This comes only two months after a debilitating doctors' strike that began on December 5, 2016 and lasted 100 days. The country has hardly recovered from the effects of that long strike and now nurses have downed their tools.

Ideally, this is a resumption of the nurses' strike of close to two weeks that was called off on December 14, 2016 after the Kenya National Union of Nurses (Knun) signed a return-to-work formula with county governments and the Ministry of Health on the understanding that talks on the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) 2013 would begin in January 2017 and be concluded by March 2017.