Can CS Duale alias the bulldozer fix a health sector on the sickbed?

Health Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale after taking office at Afya House, Nairobi, on April 1, 2025. [Standard, Kanyiri Wahito]

“I found a Member of Parliament this morning and he told me his mother is being treated for dialysis in one of the hospitals for free for the first time.”

Yes, that was our opening act, ladies and gentlemen.

Kenya’s newly-minted Health Cabinet Secretary, Adan Duale, kicked off his tenure with a declaration that he had discovered a new disease — dialysis.

If the nation wasn’t already sick, that one line was enough to cause collective cardiac arrhythmia.

Wait until he encounters terms more complex than dialysis, like laparoscopic cholecystectomy or haemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis — he might mistake them for newly established counties.

One wonders what he thinks is the synonym for death? Probably strike, considering health workers are forever on one.

From being Defence CS — where he looked less like a Cabinet Secretary and more like the overzealous scout commander you avoided in primary school, forever in uniform and seemingly a whistle-blow away from calling a morning parade — to his brief stint as Environment CS, where he counted trees and proudly reported that Kenya had planted 750 million trees — a number that still makes statisticians break out in hives — Duale’s resume reads like a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book.

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In one of his many brief — but fashionably militant — moments of walking around in full uniform like a background character from Alfred Mutua’s Cobra Squad Film, Defence CS Aden Duale made a bold, boots-on-the-ground decision: deploy the Kenya Defence Forces against Gen Z protestors in July 2024.

Yes, you read that right — not bandits, not terrorists, not external threats — but 20-somethings with placards, reusable water bottles, and flags. Real national security stuff.

The move, of course, came without Parliament’s approval — because who needs those pesky constitutional procedures when you’ve got a crisp uniform and a freshly ironed ego?

Oh, and did we mention the High Court had explicitly ruled against the deployment? Just a minor inconvenience in Duale’s personal war on public demonstrations.

Clearly, nothing screams “defending national interests” like pointing rifles at university students chanting in the streets.

And now, in his latest reincarnation, he’s at the helm of Health. Someone clearly thought: “You know who can fix this crumbling sector? The man who thought camels were national assets.”

To be fair, maybe the veterinary docket would have been a better fit. After all, he has an unrivaled emotional bond with camels, goats, and livestock.

He speaks fluently in pastoralist-ese. But human anatomy might prove a stretch — kidneys don’t graze and livers don’t migrate.

Now, the man who calls himself a bulldozer — and we believe him, because he bulldozed through parliamentary debates with little regard for nuance — is now expected to gently, surgically operate the sensitive health docket. Kenyans, may the odds be ever in your favour.

In Parliament, Duale proudly admitted to sponsoring MPs for assignments abroad to win over opposition hearts — or at least confuse them with jet lag before critical voting. A tactic both cunning and colonial in taste. Will these underhanded tactics work on health unions though?

KMPDU’s Secretary General Davji Atellah and deputy secretary-general Dennis Miskellah.

These are not your average unionists. They lead a battalion of placard-carrying intellectuals, medical creatives who can quote both Hippocrates and Karl Marx in a single breath.

What former Health CSs Barasa and Nakhumicha faced with them was no small headache. Davji doesn’t blink.

Duale might be tempted to send them on trips to Cuba in exchange for a silent quarter. But these two don’t do tourism; they do tenacity.

And let’s not forget — the handover notes he received were not exactly written by the Marcus Aurelius of the medical world.

They were more prescription scribbles than coherent plans. The previous CS may have known anatomy, but the roadmap to healing the sector? Not quite.

Now Duale, in his sharp suits and over-rehearsed baritone, is expected to fix medical supply chains, negotiate with bitter unions, make SHA work, and prevent hospitals from turning into morgues with curtains.

A big ask for a man who recently referred to dialysis as a disease.

But hey, if tree-counting was a KPI and military salutes were governance, perhaps declaring all Kenyans healthy by tweet could be next.