Efforts to unionize healthcare workers at two of Kenya’s largest private, for-profit health providers—Avenue Healthcare Hospital and AAR Healthcare—are progressing. At Avenue Hospital, significant headway has been made in establishing contacts, identifying potential leaders, and mapping the workplace. At AAR, initial contact has been established and one lead organiser, has been identified, though comprehensive workplace mapping is still pending. Challenges remain, including fear of victimisation and a perceived lack of urgency among some doctors, particularly at Avenue where many appear relatively content. However, ongoing training, empowerment efforts, and transparent communication are helping to overcome these obstacles. The next phase will involve forming an organising committee at Avenue and expanding outreach and mapping at AAR.

Alongside this organising work, the Kenyan Medical Practitioners and Dentists Union (KMPDU) is actively building a coalition to push for a shift in national policy—from healthcare privatisation to increased public funding. Through collaboration with international partners including the Dutch trade union federation FNV, Public Services International (PSI), the US-based Committee of Interns and Residents (CIR), and civil society organisations such as Oxfam, WEMOS (Werkgroep Medische Ontwikkelingssamenwerking), and SOMO (Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations), a coordinated campaign strategy has been developed. The coalition has participated in peer exchanges, planning workshops, and public forums such as the FNV 'Solidarity Festival'.

A unified plan has been agreed upon to deepen grassroots organising and research in Kenya, which will inform international advocacy to challenge the role of development finance—both bilateral and multilateral—in promoting healthcare privatisation. Domestically, five Kenyan medical unions, under KMPDU’s leadership, have agreed to organise jointly in hospitals, providing a solid foundation for future action once ongoing research is published.

Complementing this work, KMPDU and the Centre for International Corporate Tax Accountability and Research (CICTAR) have begun exposing how the global development industry fuels privatisation and profit extraction in Kenyan healthcare. Their first report, focused on VAMED, an Austrian subsidiary of German healthcare giant Fresenius, highlights the company’s receipt of European development funds while supplying medical equipment to Kenya’s public health system. Soft-launched at the KMPDU congress in May 2024 and set for public release in September, the report gained national media attention in Kenya and sparked discussions about inefficiencies in the system—countering government claims of insufficient resources to pay health workers. Additional investigations are underway into two more hospital companies operating in Kenya with development funding, as well as a broader project to map private equity investment in African healthcare, in partnership with the Private Equity Stakeholder Project (PESP).