Nurses End 41-Day Strike After Deal Lifts Risk Allowance to Ksh8,000
Counties agree to a return-to-work formula that also adds Ksh5,000 monthly uniform allowance for public health workers.
INFINITY254 MEDIA
Columnist · 11 September 2026, 3:00 PM EAT
The white coats came back on Thursday. After 41 days — or 43, depending on whose count you trust — nurses filed back into Kenya's public hospitals carrying something they had been denied for years: a signed agreement.
The Kenya National Union of Nurses and Midwives reached a return-to-work formula with the Council of Governors after marathon negotiations mediated by the Labour Ministry. The deal lifts the monthly risk allowance from Ksh3,500 to Ksh8,000 and adds a Ksh5,000 uniform allowance — a combined Ksh13,000 monthly improvement at the current exchange rate of approximately Sh129 to the dollar.
"It is not everything we asked for, but it is a beginning," KNUNM Secretary-General Seth Panyako said after signing. "We return to serve Kenyans with dignity. Our patients need us. Our patients waited."
The 41-day strike had devastating effects on public healthcare. Elective surgeries were cancelled across 47 counties, maternal health complications went unattended in understaffed facilities, and at least two deaths at major hospitals were informally attributed by families to delayed care during the walkout.
The Council of Governors, under significant political pressure from the national government, ultimately moved to settle. CoG Chair Fernandes Barasa said counties remain committed to implementing the deal but cautioned that payroll funding gaps exist in several devolved units. "We will work with the national Treasury to bridge the shortfall. But we sign in good faith," he said.
The doctors' union, which had issued its own ultimatum threatening to join the strike, stood down following the nurses' settlement. KMPDU Secretary-General Davji Atellah said doctors' own outstanding demands remain on the table but that the immediate crisis had been defused.
For patients — and particularly for the mothers who delivered babies in hospital corridors without nursing support during the worst weeks of the strike — the return is both a relief and a reminder of how fragile Kenya's public health system remains.