Patients at Mathari mental hospital along Thika road, Nairobi have escaped from the institution following a countrywide doctors and nurses strike that has kicked off earlier today.

About 100 mental patients are said to have taken off from Mathari hospital and in a clip that has been making rounds on social media, a staff member can be seen chasing after a patient clad in the hospital regalia. The police has launched a manhunt for the missing patients.

Doctors have made good their threat to go on a countrywide strike today, paralyzing operations in public hospitals.

A meeting scheduled yesterday between officials of the Kenya National Union of Nurses and Kenya Medical Practitioners and Pharmacists Union and Health Cabinet Secretary Cleopa Mailu to avert the strike, did not bear fruits as the officials failed to turn up.

The doctors and nurses unions want a 300 per cent salary increment as stipulated in the CBA signed in 2013.

Kenya National Union of Nurses and Kenya Medical Practitioners and Pharmacists Union had issued a 21-days strike notice, which elapsed Sunday midnight.

Mailu has, however, asked the medics to go back to work, saying the strike notice given by doctors is premature and pre-emptive, since the 90-days negotiation period accorded by the Court has not yet lapsed.