CS Barasa announces alternative system after SHA outage rocks hospitals
By Arnold Ngure, January 16, 2025
Health Cabinet Secretary Debora Barasa has revealed that the Ministry will have an alternative system after patients stormed her press conference at Afya House on Wednesday, January 15, 2025, over system failures of the Social Health Authority (SHA).
In a statement on Thursday, January 16, 2025, Barasa noted that indeed there had been system interruptions which made it difficult to process patients for treatment and discharge and that the glitch had been corrected.
“Today we have come to assess the situation following the incident and concerns as well as grievances by Kenyans regarding the system interruption and we acknowledge; yes, there was a system interruption which is common with any system not only in Kenya but also globally,” Barasa said.
Up and running
“Having identified the system interruption, we have been able to visit the labour ward as well as the maternity area. We have also seen the billing and the discharge area in this facility.
The CS indicated that the ministry had managed to correct the failure which had left many patients at the Kenyatta National Hospital and other health facilities frustrated.
“We are happy to report that the system is up and running following tireless work among the technical team. I had instructed them to look at interventions to ensure that we don’t have any kind of system interruptions and we have alternatives in case it do so happen,” the CS assured.
Alternative system
The CS equally revealed that the Ministry of Health will have an alternative system to support operations and allow for the processing of patients in case the SHA system crashes.
“We are happy to report to Kenyans that we have an alternative system and we have witnessed and seen that there is no system interruption. The incident occurred on the 14-15 up to 10:00 am and the backlog has been sorted and patients are receiving seamless services,” she added.
“Equally we want to apologise on behalf of the Ministry for the challenges that our patients faced. We have identified the patients that had come to the ministry and we are looking at how we shall be able to improve their services in future. Some of them have been able to come back and we will have testimonials from them,” Barasa observed.
On Wednesday, January 15, 2025, more than 20 patients stormed a presser at Afya House where they revealed their frustrations with system failures with the newly-launched medical insurance agency- SHA.
The patients from all over the country had come to the referral facility but the system failure had kept them on the queue for days.