Kenya's government has fired 25,000 striking nurses and health workers, saying they had defied an order to return to work and were placing patients' lives at risk.

"All illegally striking health professionals, who defied the directive … to report back to work, have been sacked," government spokesman Alfred Mutua said on Thursday.

"Twenty-five thousand of these officers have, as of this morning, been deleted from the payroll … All qualified health professionals, who are unemployed and/or retired have been advised to report to their nearest health facility for interviews and deployment starting tomorrow morning at 9 o'clock," he added.

Thousands of nurses and other health professionals went on strike last week in a dispute over allowances and benefits, halting operations in many hospitals around the country.

As reports mounted of patients being neglected, the two main unions met the government on Sunday and agreed to return to work, but many strikers rejected the deal.

The Daily Nation newspaper reported on Thursday that a mother and her newborn son had bled to death on Tuesday outside a dispensary in Kwale County on the Indian Ocean coast after health workers refused to treat them.

"What is the use? Why should we have hospitals and personnel? Why was my wife left to die just like that?" Chaka Kadide, the husband of the dead woman, 35-year-old Chari Katana, told the paper.

Frederick Omiah, a member of the Kenya Health Professionals Society, said the government's decision had set up a "very ugly scenario" and he feared strikers would continue protests in Nairobi and elsewhere.

"This is going to make an already delicate and volatile situation worse. Most surveys indicate the workers are not back at work … when somebody is wounded if you add another injury, they will get more infuriated," he said.

Mutua said there would be no problem replacing the sacked workers. A consultative team set up by the government to look into their grievances will continue its work. "We have over 100,000 to 200,000 health professionals looking for work today … There will be a lag of a day or two … but it is better than letting people die on the floor, at the gate, or suffer in pain," Mutua said.