Health Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale has fired a fresh warning shot at fraudsters in the healthcare sector, vowing that rogue hospitals and complicit insurers will be stripped of their licences in a sweeping crackdown.
Speaking in Narok on Saturday, Duale announced that the Ministry of Health, working hand-in-hand with private medical insurers, will deregister facilities implicated in defrauding the Social Health Authority (SHA). The move, he said, is aimed at restoring integrity and trust in a sector long plagued by corruption.
“If you are a cartel, even if you try to tarnish my name through the media, I will not be shaken,” Duale declared defiantly. “When I deregister your facility, we will also deregister every fraudulent insurer. We will not gamble with the health of Kenyans.”
Invoking the spirit of former ministers like John Michuki, known for their uncompromising reforms, Duale insisted that no amount of pushback would derail his campaign to clean up the system. He accused entrenched cartels of using new tactics, including media smear campaigns, to resist long-overdue reforms.
The CS revealed plans to hand over a file to the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) in the coming week, naming individuals and institutions accused of perpetuating graft within the healthcare ecosystem. Legal action, he assured, will follow.
His remarks came just a day after the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Council (KMPDC) announced drastic measures of its own shutting down 544 facilities and revoking licences for 454 hospitals found to be in violation of licensing rules. According to the council, many had employed unregistered staff or operated without proper authorisation.
For Duale, the back-to-back actions signal a new era of accountability. “As the President has said, we must make healthcare accessible and equitable. That will only happen when we dismantle corruption networks that profit from sick Kenyans,” he said.
The message is clear: the era of impunity in Kenya’s health sector may finally be facing its reckoning.
