The Kenyan government has played a central role along the World Bank Group and the United States government in promoting greater private sector participation in healthcare in Kenya. We, the undersigned civil society organisations, have made a submission to call the attention to ongoing and potential future harms associated with privatisation and commercialisation of healthcare in Kenya.

In recent years, the Kenyan government and development actors have encouraged the growth of the commercial private healthcare sector—notwithstanding its unaffordability, focus on wealthy urban patients, varying quality, and other associated problems—while comparatively neglecting the public one. Kenya’s signature policy for delivering universal health coverage (UHC), the planned adoption of mandatory social health insurance, appears set to further accelerate the growth of the private sector, despite documented issues including exclusion, impoverishment, and inadequate and unsafe care.

The submission was prepared by Kenyan civil society and joined in solidarity by other organisations, such as ours, whose work addresses human rights and health issues in Kenya and globally.