MoH dispute with Murang'a lands in court as digital system switches off

The Afya Ke health management system was adopted by the county in 2023. [Courtesy]

The war between the Ministry of Health and the county government has left digital systems in Murang’a switched off.

This has forced health facilities to resort to the use of manual systems, where patients are forced to walk with paper along the corridors to transact services.

This follows the dispute over continued use of the Afya Ke health management system, which the county adopted in 2023.

As the controversy rages on, the medical officers, through the Health CEC Dr Fredrick Mbugu and his Chief Officer Eliud Maina, have reported facing extreme challenges in digging out the patients' past medical history, thus spending more time in the clinics.

The 170 health facilities in Murang’a have returned to using the manual system in a strategy to provide treatment to patients a week after the Ministry of Health shut down the Afya Ke system.

On Friday, the county government lodged a suit in court seeking restoration of the Afya Ke, on the grounds that documents of the patients had disappeared from the system.

James Thuku, the Attorney at the County Government, seeks a court order to compel the Ministry of Health, the Digital Health Agency, Health Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale, SHA, and the Attorney General to restore Afya Ke and access the facility uninterrupted.

The petitioner cites that the facilities affected by the shutdown serve over a million people from the counties of Murang’a, Kiambu, Nyeri, Machakos, Kirinyaga and Nyandarua, who are suffering over the action.

In the affidavit, Thuku seeks that Murang’a’s health facilities be accorded uninterrupted access to the services available through the Afya Ke platform, which include lodging claims, submitting, tracking, and processing claims under the SHA framework.

“The applicant digitised health care provision by adapting an integrated information management system that makes it easy to take and keep patients' data. The applicant has automated several government facilities to ensure efficient, reliable and high-quality service to the people,” read part of the plaint.

Thuku moved to court following the shutdown of the Afya Ke system that has been used by the health facilities in the past three years.

On Wednesday, Murang’a Governor Irungu Kang’ata accused Health CS Adan Duale of the shutdown of the digitalised system.

Duale, in reply, said there was no switch-off of the system, warning Kang’ata against making alarming statements.

The respondents, he informed the court, shut down the Afya HMIS digital health system platform that brought down the entire county health system that had been developed and used for three years.

In the suit, the Council of Governors and the county governments of Murang’a, Kiambu and Nairobi are listed as the interested parties.

 The county secretary, Dr Newton Mwangi, said they opted for the Tiberbu HMIS but did not provide the telemedicine module presently available in the Afya Ke programme.

“Engagements with the respondents, the county government was informed that the alternative system could not accommodate and preserve the patients' historical data generated through Afya Ke, over the preceding three years, while it maintained access by the relevant health facilities,” Mwangi said in the plaint.

The telemedicine programme, supported by Afya Ke, between January and June had attended 76,185 patients within the 36 health facilities in the county.

 In the hospitals, the absence of the digitised platform has forced a return to the manual system, with clinicians rewriting patients' histories, thus spending more time as queues build up across the health centres.