This archive piece says Nairobi County Health Department had identified more than 800 private clinics operating in the city without approval. The disclosure raised fresh concern over how such facilities continued to function under the watch of multiple regulators.
The article points to a breakdown in oversight between City Hall, which licenses businesses, the county health department, which vets medical facilities, and the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Board, which monitors health facilities nationwide. It asks where those agencies had been as the illegal clinics expanded.
According to the piece, the problem was not limited to empty premises or hidden operators. Some of the clinics were said to have qualified and registered medical practitioners, and in some cases even licences, yet still operated outside proper approval channels.
The article also alleges that enforcement has often been weak or compromised. It says proprietors sometimes pay and obtain protection from the very people expected to shut them down, allowing the facilities to survive repeated crackdowns.
It notes that joint swoops by the medical board, security agencies and county authorities have happened before, with culprits arrested, but those operations have not produced lasting results. The article says operators know when to disappear and return once the pressure eases.
The call in the piece is for a major operation to close all illegal private clinics and charge the proprietors. It argues that unsafe medical outfits pose a direct threat to the public and should not be allowed to continue operating because of laxity, corruption or incompetence among the agencies tasked with enforcement.
