Due to the demand of medical doctors in Kenya for the government led by President Uhuru Kenyatta to honour a 2013 deal on salaries increment, whose refusal has led to strike and paralysed medical activities in Kenya since last December, a Kenyan court has given doctors and nurses a further five days to end the nationwide strike.

Ceoafrica gathered that union officials had been threatened with jail over the strike, because about 5,000 medical staff in more than 2,000 public hospitals stopped working in the first week of December and patients have been unable to get basic care.

The doctors have rejected a government offer of a 40% rise saying that it fell short of the 2013 promises.

Hellen Wasilwa, a judge at Kenya's Employment and Labour Relations Court, said the five-day reprieve is "not for negotiation but for calling off the strike”.