Kenya’s public health sector is on the verge of collapsing as a result of failure to address the challenges leading to the collapse, Kenya Union of Clinical Officers has said.

Kuco said the health sector is facing a human resource crisis yet the country has qualified health workers who are jobless.

The union’s chairperson Peterson Wachira said despite experiencing a shortage of health workers, the government has remained adamant about addressing the shortage by employing more health workers.

"We have a severe shortage of health workers amidst a rising number of unemployment," Wachira told the Star.

"We have about 4,000 unemployed doctors who are trained, 9,000 clinical officers who are jobless, we have about 20,000 nurses who are unemployed." 

Wachira said the country is losing the most experienced nurses to other countries because they have been neglected.

He said the working environment for health workers is toxic, pushing some of them into mental anguish.

"We have reached a point where some of the health officers cannot use their NHIF to access the same services that they offer and that is why we are seeing suicide cases," Wachira said.

The union said at least four clinical officers have died by suicide in the last three months due to mental health-related stress

According to KUCO, the country lacks a harmonized way of managing health human resources in an effective manner.