Health services in public hospitals are likely to worsen after consultants announced they will join the strike.
These are specialist doctors who have completed advanced education and clinical training in a specific area of medicine such as oncology.
Consultants are senior doctors who practice in one of the medical specialities.
The Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union on Thursday said the consultants will be joining the strike from Friday.
This comes even as the strike which began on March 14 entered its twenty-second day.
KMPDU SG Davji Atellah said the union will escalate the strike from next week to include some of the private hospitals.
Most of the consultants are based at the Kenyatta National Hospital.
"As the strike enters day 22, we have to continue being on strike and we are going to escalate it such that we are going to stop offering private services that were offered before by consultants," Atellah said.
He added:
"Next week we will see how to make sure that doctors working in private hospitals see the need to protect the profession, it is not an individual war."
This is even as the union instructed the medical interns not to collect their posting letters from the Ministry of Health as had been directed by the government.
Head of Public Service Felix Koskei in a statement on Monday said the government had secured Sh2.4 billion to facilitate the immediate deployment and posting of the 2023-24 cohort of medical student interns.
Koskei said the deployment of intern doctors will begin on Thursday and called on the union to suspend their strike amid ongoing mediation to resolve the remaining issues.
But Atellah on Thursday said medical interns will not collect the letters adding that doctors must be respected.
"We saw that they released some letters purporting to post medical interns. We have asked all the interns that that letter is disgusting, it is contemptuous, it is a show of immorality of the government and injustice being perpetrated to the interns," he said.
"It is a basic principle that every element of doctors must be respected, therefore they will not pick those letters. We will wait until the government realise there is a need to honour CBA."
The posting of medical interns was one of the pertinent issues the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentist Union was pushing for when they went on strike on March 14.
However, KMPDU chairperson Abi Mwachi said the release of the Sh2.4 billion is meant to cement what he termed as illegal salary cuts for junior doctors.