The Social Health Authority (SHA) has issued a notice to healthcare providers alerting them to a widespread outage affecting critical digital services.
In a statement addressed to healthcare providers on Tuesday, November 18, SHA CEO Mercy Mwangangi confirmed the severity of the issue and apologized for the resulting disruption to medical services across the country.
"This is to formally notify you of a widespread service interruption and downtime affecting the Digital Health Agency's services, which are critical to the Social Health Authority (SHA) operations.
"We have received notification from our service provider. Digital Health Agency indicating a major incident leading to significant system unavailability," the notice read.
Mwangangi expressed regret for the inconvenience caused to healthcare teams and patients, and acknowledged the role digital systems play in health service delivery.
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"We understand the critical nature of these services for your daily operations and patient care, and we sincerely apologize for the significant inconvenience and disruption this is causing," the notice added.
SHA noted that technical teams are working round the clock to resolve the issue, in collaboration with the Digital Health Agency.
"Our technical teams, in close collaboration with the Digital Health Agency, are fully mobilized and working with the highest urgency to identify the root cause and restore full functionality as quickly as possible," the statement concluded.
Notably, for the better part of Tuesday, Cloudflare which provides tools to help websites fight off cyberattacks and load content efficiently experienced a major global outage.
The downtime temporarily took down several high-profile services including X (formerly Twitter), ChatGPT, Spotify, Canva, and thousands of websites.
The outage resulted in users encountering widespread 500 internal server errors as many platforms became inaccessible.
The disruption was linked to a sudden spike in unusual traffic, which triggered failures in Cloudflare’s infrastructure.
Although the American company confirmed it was not a cyberattack, the exact cause of the traffic surge is still under investigation.
This comes a week after SHA warned members of the public against fraudsters impersonating its staff to defraud unsuspecting citizens.
In a statement on Friday, November 7, SHA CEO Mercy Mwangangi said the fraudsters claim to assist Kenyans with SHA registration or expedited services for a fee.
“We are deeply saddened and concerned to learn that some members of the public have been defrauded by criminals impersonating SHA employees and conning unsuspecting Kenyans by claiming they can help with registration or speed up SHA services at a fee.
'Your trust is sacred to us, and it pains us greatly that dishonest individuals would exploit that trust for their own gain," read the statement in part.
Mwangangi pointed out that SHA registration is free, and that the authority’s staff do not request payment or personal details from members of the public.
The SHA CEO advised Kenyans to report any suspicious individuals or incidents immediately to the nearest police station or directly through SHA’s official channels
"Please know that SHA staff will never ask for money to offer service, or your M-Pesa PIN. If you or someone you know has been affected, we urge you to report the incident immediately to the police and to SHA through our official toll-free line 147 or the dedicated email [email protected]," the statement added.
