By Arch. Dr. D.K. Gitau, Diaspora Times Editor

“This is the moment to demand more than resignations. Kenyans must demand arrests, asset recovery, full disclosure of every hospital paid, and the stepping down of those who engineered this betrayal.“

What began as a revolutionary public health program has mutated into one of the most brazen looting schemes in Kenya’s history. The Social Health Authority (SHA), introduced with pomp and promise, was meant to rescue millions of Kenyans from the grip of expensive healthcare. Instead, it has become a billion-shilling hole, bleeding taxpayer funds into ghost hospitals, shady operatives, and politically protected criminals.

This week, CS Aden Duale’s ministry suspended dozens of these so-called hospitals, but not because they discovered the fraud on their own. It was the noise made by concerned Kenyans that dragged this rot into the sunlight. Had those voices remained silent, the heist would have continued, silent and surgical. Even more insulting was the attempted cover-up: government-aligned bloggers were deployed to accuse whistleblowers and activists of being paid propagandists. But the facts, stubborn as ever, have crushed that narrative. Now, with egg on their faces, the regime is pretending to act.

Yet beneath this surface-level cleanup lies a scandal so deeply rooted that it threatens the very soul of public service. A staggering 33 percent of the suspended and phantom hospitals are from Duale’s home region. A coincidence? Of course not. It appears more like a convenient nexus of power and plunder. And it gets worse. Most of the ghost hospitals were established in January 2025 and rushed through registration and approval within a single day. SHA then wired them millions, some even received three payments in a single month. Meanwhile, genuine hospitals with valid claims amounting to more than Ksh. 82 billion remain unpaid. The government has ignored them, choosing instead to enrich a criminal syndicate operating under the guise of health provision.

Despite the gravity of the scandal, no one has been arrested. Not a single prosecution has begun. Not one shilling has been recovered. Instead, the government crashed the Master Health Registry, the very platform Kenyans were using to unearth the rot. In what can only be described as an elaborate cover-up, the state deregistered only those ghost facilities that the public had already exposed. The rest remain hidden, untouched, and possibly still operational. It is a move that reeks of desperation and guilt.

Equally disturbing is the question of systems. Payments to these ghost institutions were not made in error. They were designed, approved, and executed with chilling efficiency. This wasn’t negligence. It was a mission. A machine built to loot. How else can one explain the firing of over 1,000 Surveillance and Quality Assurance Officers, the very people who physically verified hospitals on the ground, and replacing them with a shiny Ksh. 104 billion digital system that failed instantly and spectacularly? Or perhaps it didn’t fail. Perhaps it worked exactly as intended, not to protect public funds, but to move them quickly and invisibly into private pockets.

What we are witnessing is not just theft. It is the deliberate collapse of public trust. It is the silent execution of a nation’s health priorities. While Kenyans sleep in hospital corridors, wait weeks for dialysis, and die because of unavailable cancer treatment, millions are being handed to shell clinics that have never seen a patient or hired a nurse. It is wicked. It is criminal. It is unforgivable.

This is a system where the poor are used as pawns in schemes they will never understand, where policy is merely theatre, and where corruption has shed its mask and now parades openly, daring anyone to stop it. The SHA scandal has shown us that in Kenya today, the health sector is not broken; it has been hijacked. And the hijackers are not outsiders. They are well-dressed, well-connected, and firmly in power.

This is the moment to demand more than resignations. Kenyans must demand arrests, asset recovery, full disclosure of every hospital paid, and the stepping down of those who engineered this betrayal. Because if this is allowed to pass, it won’t just be money that was stolen. It will be our very right to live with dignity, to be treated with honesty, and to trust that a hospital is, at the very least, real.

We must not be silent. We must not forget. And we must not forgive until justice is done.

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