Murang’a County has been forced to scale down health services after its free Afya.ke digital health platform went offline, sparking a row with the Ministry of Health over who shut it down.
Governor Irungu Kang’ata on Wednesday accused the national government of switching off the system and pushing the county’s public hospitals and dispensaries onto Taifa Care, the platform run by the Social Health Authority (SHA).
Health Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale has denied the claim.
“The Ministry of Health has not switched off the Afya Ke system,” Mr Duale said.
Afya.ke was in use at 165 health facilities in the county, where it handled the storage and retrieval of patient records. The county now expects delays in the coming days as IT staff manually move records to the national platform.
Mr Kang’ata said the switch-off puts patients’ medical histories at risk and could disrupt the county’s digital services, including telemedicine.
“We have to scale down our services until we are able to join Tibabu,” he said.
The governor said the Digital Health Agency (DHA), the Ministry of Health and SHA had declined to certify Afya.ke for health information exchange, even as systems run by private hospitals were cleared.
He said the platform was developed within the national government before Murang’a expanded it with local software developers, and that Mr Duale had personally assured him it would be linked to SHA rather than closed.
Mr Kang’ata also raised concerns over the cost of moving to the national system, noting that Afya.ke had been provided to the county free of charge.
Mr Duale described the platform as a private arrangement between the county government and its developers.
He said the DHA had not refused to certify the system, adding that neither the county nor the developers had applied for certification.
Under the national framework, digital health systems must be assessed for functionality, data security, privacy and interoperability before they are approved for use.
Telemedicine push
The outage is a setback for a county that has billed itself as Kenya’s digital health frontrunner.
The programme was meant to serve about 1.2 million residents, most of them in rural areas, with 15 doctors at a central telemedicine hub handling between 450 and 600 patients a day.
A further 302 facilities were to be connected before the end of the year, following a 35-facility pilot in 2025.
The dispute comes as the national government consolidates patient data under SHA, with Taifa Care forming part of its wider digital health rollout.
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By Reginah Wamboi
Reginah is a seasoned Kenyan journalist with a keen interest in tech, business and African startups. Send tips to editorial@techtrendsmedia.co.ke