Kenyan health service faces crisis as doctors join striking nurses

to follow KENYA MYSTERY DISEASE Meanwhile, doctors and paramedics have decided to stay away from health centres affected by the ongoing strike by nurses.

The chairman of the Kenyan Medical Association, Dr Kahama Rogo, said this was not officially a strike, but the effect would just be the same.

He said doctors have been struggling to keep services going in the absence of nurses, but that they could not cope any more.

The nurses went on strike at the end of last month asking for big pay increases, but the government threatened them with dismissal.

A BBC correspondent in Nairobi says with cholera outbreak in Nairobi and the threat of the unidentified disease, the doctors' action comes at a moment when pressure on health sevices is at its highest.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service