Afya.ke Outage Sparks Murang’a and Kenya Health Row

In Short

• Afya.ke, Murang’a County’s free digital health platform, has gone offline.
• The county says the national government switched it off to force a move to Taifa Care, run by the Social Health Authority.
• The Ministry of Health denies switching off the system.

What Happened

Afya.ke went offline in Murang’a County, affecting 165 public hospitals and dispensaries that used it to store and retrieve patient records. Afya.ke is an electronic health records system, meaning it keeps patient files digitally instead of paper folders.

Governor Irungu Kang’ata said the outage has forced the county to scale down services. He warned of delays as county IT teams manually move records to the national platform. He also said patients’ medical histories could be at risk and that the disruption could affect digital services like telemedicine, which is remote consultations with clinicians using calls or video.

Kang’ata accused the national government of switching off Afya.ke and pushing facilities onto Taifa Care, a national platform linked to Kenya’s Social Health Authority. Health Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale denied the claim, saying the Ministry of Health did not switch off the system.

The governor also claimed the Digital Health Agency, the Ministry of Health, and the Social Health Authority declined to certify Afya.ke for health information exchange. Health information exchange is the ability for different hospital systems to securely share patient data. Duale said the platform is a private arrangement between the county and developers, and that certification had not been sought.

Why It Matters

This dispute highlights a common risk in public sector digitisation, counties can lose service continuity when local systems are not certified or integrated into national health data standards.

It also raises practical concerns about interoperability, data security, and patient privacy. Under Kenya’s framework, digital health systems must be assessed for functionality, security, privacy, and interoperability before approval.

For founders and operators building health tech in Kenya, the key lesson is that “working in one county” is not the same as being cleared for national health data exchange. The certification and integration path can decide whether a platform survives a policy shift.