The Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Union (KMPDU) has called for the outright withdrawal of the proposed Medical Practitioners and Dentists (Amendment) Bill, 2026, arguing the legislation is unnecessary and duplicates existing regulatory frameworks.
The union made its position clear during a public participation event held on Saturday, August 22, in Kiambu County. KMPDU maintains that current laws governing health practitioners are adequate, and that doctors do not require additional legislation to function within a properly regulated sector.
The union’s argument: According to KMPDU, existing legal instruments already provide sufficient tools to regulate healthcare professionals and address malpractice. The union’s position is essentially one of regulatory sufficiency: Kenya does not have a governance gap in medical practice, so a new law solves a problem that does not exist. That framing puts KMPDU on a collision course with the Bill’s sponsors, who see specific, targeted gaps the current law fails to close.
What the Bill actually proposes: The Medical Practitioners and Dentists (Amendment) Bill, 2026 is sponsored by Nyeri Town MP Duncan Mathenge. Its stated aims go beyond cosmetic changes to the regulatory architecture.
First, it seeks to introduce additional regulatory measures targeting the fraudulent acquisition of practicing licences — a direct response to concerns about unqualified or improperly credentialed individuals gaining access to clinical practice, a problem that strikes at the heart of patient safety.
Second, the Bill proposes to expand the oversight mandate of the Medical Practitioners and Dentists Council, the statutory body responsible for licensing and disciplining doctors and dentists. Wider oversight powers would, in theory, allow the Council to intervene more decisively in cases of professional misconduct.
Third, and perhaps most consequential for the public, the Bill introduces heavy penalties for facilities that illegally detain patients or bodies over unpaid medical bills — a practice that has drawn persistent public criticism in Kenya for years, particularly involving grieving families unable to retrieve the remains of loved ones from mortuaries. Under the proposed law, offending facilities would face fines of up to Ksh 5 million and prison terms of up to five years.
The tension at the centre of the debate: This is where KMPDU’s blanket rejection becomes harder to defend on its face. The union represents doctors and dentists — not hospital administrators or facility owners who profit from patient detention practices.
If the Bill’s detention provisions are aimed at institutional bad actors rather than practitioners themselves, it is not immediately clear why KMPDU would oppose a measure explicitly designed to protect patients and families from a widely condemned practice.
Similarly, expanding the Council’s oversight mandate and cracking down on fraudulent licensing would, if anything, protect legitimate practitioners by weeding out unqualified competitors and reinforcing public trust in the profession.
A union genuinely focused on protecting its members’ professional standing might be expected to welcome tighter controls on licence fraud, not resist them.
What’s really at stake: KMPDU’s objection may be less about the substance of these specific provisions and more about resisting an expansion of regulatory power generally — a common concern among professional bodies wary of ceding additional control to statutory councils, regardless of the stated intent.
Unions have historically pushed back against amendments perceived as opening the door to broader disciplinary or bureaucratic overreach, even when individual clauses appear targeted and reasonable.
Whether that caution is warranted will likely depend on how the Bill’s oversight provisions are eventually worded, and whether safeguards exist to prevent the expanded mandate from being applied punitively against practitioners rather than the facilities and fraudulent actors the Bill claims to target.
For now, the standoff leaves patients, doctors and Parliament in a familiar Kenyan legislative pattern: a bill promising accountability, a professional body crying overreach, and the public left waiting to see who blinks first.
