By Benadeta Mwaura - Reporter
Kenya, August 21, 2026 - Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH) has asked patients seeking non-emergency medical care to consider other health facilities as the country’s largest referral hospital struggles to cope with a surge in patient numbers.
The warning may appear to be a routine request to ease congestion, but it points to a deeper problem within Kenya’s healthcare system: when services at lower levels are disrupted, the pressure does not disappear. It moves upwards, eventually landing at facilities such as KNH that are already handling some of the country’s most complex cases.
KNH says the increase in patient numbers is linked to the ongoing industrial action by healthcare workers in several counties. Patients who would ordinarily seek treatment at county and other health facilities are increasingly making their way to the national referral hospital, resulting in longer queues, extended waiting times and delays in accessing care. The hospital has particularly raised concern about the pressure being placed on emergency services.
“Clients seeking non-emergency care are encouraged to consider other hospitals closer to them, where appropriate, to ease pressure on KNH and facilitate timely access to care,” the hospital said.
The distinction between emergency and non-emergency care is important. KNH has not announced a blanket closure of its services or told patients requiring emergency treatment to stay away. Instead, the appeal is aimed at patients whose conditions can appropriately be managed elsewhere.
That distinction also highlights the role KNH plays within the country's health system.
As a national referral hospital, KNH is expected to receive patients requiring specialised treatment and care that may not be available at county or lower-level facilities. But when those facilities are unable to provide routine and less complex services because of industrial action, the referral system begins to work in reverse.
Patients who should ordinarily be treated closer to home move towards Nairobi, increasing demand at a facility designed to handle referrals rather than absorb the entire country's healthcare needs.
The consequences are predictable. More patients mean longer queues, greater pressure on medical staff and fewer resources available for patients requiring specialised or emergency treatment.
This is particularly concerning because emergency care leaves little room for delays.
A patient suffering a life-threatening condition cannot simply wait for the health system to recover from a disruption. They need assessment, stabilisation and treatment as quickly as possible. When emergency departments become congested, even small delays can have serious consequences.
The current situation therefore raises questions that go beyond the immediate healthcare workers’ strike.
How resilient is Kenya's referral system when one part of the health system experiences prolonged disruption?
And how much capacity exists at county and lower-level facilities to absorb patients who would otherwise end up at KNH?
Those questions have become increasingly relevant as Kenya attempts to build a healthcare system based on universal access and stronger primary healthcare.
The government's recently launched SHA 922 emergency response system is one example of the effort to strengthen the country's emergency-care infrastructure.
Launched on August 5, the National Ambulance Dispatch Centre connects more than 600 accredited public and private ambulances, including county government ambulances and those operated by organisations such as the Kenya Red Cross and St John Ambulance. The system is intended to coordinate emergency medical response across all 47 counties.
But ambulances alone cannot solve congestion inside hospitals.
A functioning emergency-care system requires the entire chain to work: patients need to access appropriate care at the right level, ambulances need to transport them quickly when necessary, county hospitals need adequate personnel and equipment, and referral facilities need enough capacity to handle patients who genuinely require specialised treatment.
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When one link weakens, pressure quickly builds elsewhere.
That is what makes the KNH situation significant. The congestion is not simply a problem inside one hospital. It is a visible symptom of disruption across a wider healthcare network.
The challenge is also not entirely new.
Kenya has spent years attempting to strengthen primary healthcare and reduce unnecessary pressure on referral hospitals. The logic is straightforward: if people can receive quality and affordable care at health centres and county hospitals, national referral facilities can concentrate their resources on complicated cases requiring specialised expertise.
But that model only works when lower-level facilities have the personnel, medicines, equipment and financing required to provide those services.
The ongoing industrial action has exposed how dependent the system remains on the availability of healthcare workers at every level.
For patients, the impact is immediate. A person who would normally visit a nearby county hospital may instead have to travel to Nairobi. Once there, they join thousands of other patients competing for limited consultation rooms, beds, healthcare workers and emergency services.
The burden is not limited to hospitals either. Families may face additional transport costs, longer waiting periods and lost income as they spend more time seeking treatment far from home.
For KNH, the immediate priority is therefore to protect its ability to manage patients who genuinely require national referral services while encouraging those seeking routine care to use facilities closer to where they live.
But the longer-term solution lies outside the hospital gates.
Kenya needs a health system in which patients do not have to travel to the country's biggest referral hospital simply because the facility closest to them cannot provide care.
The current congestion at KNH should therefore be viewed as more than an operational challenge. It is a stress test for the country's healthcare architecture.
If a disruption at county level can rapidly increase pressure at the national referral hospital, it suggests that Kenya's health system still has considerable work to do in building resilience across all levels of care.
For now, KNH is asking non-emergency patients to look elsewhere. But the bigger question for policymakers is whether there are enough functioning alternatives for those patients to turn to.
Because a referral system only works when there is somewhere to refer patients from, and somewhere capable of receiving them when the system comes under pressure.