Kenya to Give Priority to Local Health Workers Before Engaging Foreign Doctors, Says CS Duale
Priority for foreign practitioners, he said, will be limited to highly specialized or emerging medical fields where local expertise is either unavailable or insufficient to meet current needs.
Health Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale. | PHOTO: @HonAdenDuale/X
By Ruth Sang
Health Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale announced that the government will first give a priority to the licensing and deployment of qualified Kenyan health professionals, after then, foreign doctors and practitioners will be called after that.
Issuing a statement to newsrooms, CS Duale emphasized the fact that public-trained Kenyans ought to have the first priority for jobs in the country. He added that the state invests heavily in training health workers at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels and hence has an obligation to ensure that these professionals are absorbed into the local health system.
The cabinet secretary explained this is the policy direction which followed complaints raised by the ministry of health when it was seen where quite a number of foreign-trained people attempted to register as practitioners in Kenya without proper recognition or accreditation in the origins of their training. Such performance trends warrant the establishment of an unequivocal protection for integrity and standards of Kenya’s healthcare system.
CS Duale further said that the move reflects internationally recognized best practices, which means it is guided by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the World Health Organization (WHO). According to both global bodies, countries should primarily employ their qualified health workforce before strong and sustainable health systems are built.
“No country in the world has successfully developed a stable and self-sustaining health system on a foreign health workforce without first addressing the routine licensing and deployment of its own doctors and health professionals,” Duale said.
He said the fact of prioritizing local practitioners does not stop the Ministry of Health from reviewing applications from foreign health workers a case at a time. Observations will be made against the national interest in instances where there exists a clear skills gap.
Priority for foreign practitioners, he said, will be limited to highly specialized or emerging medical fields where local expertise is either unavailable or insufficient to meet current needs.
According to Duale, such an approach is certainly not intended to be exclusionary since similar policies are being implemented in several countries, including the developed ones. These are protective systems for local professionals while still allowing regulated and exceptional entry of foreign practitioners when necessary to strengthen service delivery.
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