Nairobi, Kenya — The Kenyan government has promised that public officers will not face disruptions in their medical care, even as a standoff between private hospitals and the Social Health Authority (SHA) threatens to upend services.

On Tuesday, senior officials from SHA, the Kenya Healthcare Federation and the Kenya Association of Private Hospitals met in Nairobi to try to calm growing tensions. The talks ended with an assurance that public officers — including teachers and police — would continue receiving treatment under a new working arrangement.

“To ensure public officers continue to receive uninterrupted healthcare, SHA has developed a new working arrangement to sustain the payment scheme,” the Authority said in a statement. “This initiative guarantees that services remain accessible, as budgetary allocations are made available.”

The pledge comes at a time of unease. On Monday, the Rural Urban Private Hospitals Association (RUPHA) announced that its facilities would stop attending to teachers and police officers once they were fully transferred to the SHA system.

RUPHA chairperson Dr Brian Lishenga argued that the move should not proceed until hospitals had been paid in full. He accused SHA of turning down claims worth more than 10.6 billion shillings “without due process,” adding that the losses were crippling private providers.

Teachers and police officers, two of the largest groups under the new scheme, have voiced fears of being caught in the middle. Their transition from private insurers to SHA has been marked by confusion, with questions about whether hospitals would honour their cards.

SHA, for its part, has insisted that no public officer will be turned away. The Authority has also pledged to strengthen its claims management systems and to collaborate more closely with providers to resolve disputes. Existing contracts, it added, would remain intact to ensure “equitable treatment” of hospitals across the board.

The government hopes the assurances will ease tensions. But with private hospitals still demanding clarity on their claims, the standoff shows little sign of fading soon.