Kenya’s Pharmacy and Poisons Board (PPB) is working with the Digital Health Agency to introduce a national track and trace system covering health products from manufacturer or importer through to patient, its chief executive has said.
For manufacturers, importers and distributors supplying Kenya, three developments carry practical weight. Track and trace will impose serialisation and reporting obligations across the supply chain once implemented, and companies should establish now what the technical requirements will be. The Board has issued Kenya’s first Good Pharmacy Practice standards and says it has assessed 605 facilities across 43 counties against them. And a multisectoral committee on substandard and falsified products now links health, regulatory, customs, security and law-enforcement agencies, with what the Board describes as strengthened controls at ports of entry — meaning import consignments face a coordinated rather than a single-agency check.
Dr Ahmed Mohamed, the PPB chief executive, set out the reforms at the Kenya Health Summit 2026. “We have strengthened the regulation of pharmacy practice and health products and technologies as part of ongoing reforms to protect patients and support Universal Health Coverage,” he said.
He said track and trace would improve supply-chain visibility and help detect substandard, falsified and illegally imported products. No implementation date, phasing plan or technical standard was announced.
The Board is providing regulatory support to 13 new pharmaceutical manufacturers at different stages of establishment, alongside Good Manufacturing Practice inspections and product registration, Dr Mohamed said.
On enforcement and surveillance, he said the Board had reviewed 1,413 product-quality complaints, coordinated 99 product recalls and issued 14 rapid alerts, and that operations had resulted in 95 arrests and the closure of 48 non-compliant premises. He said 32,833 adverse drug reaction reports had been reviewed, with reporting now available across all 47 counties through web, mobile and USSD channels. The Board reports having licensed 15,679 pharmaceutical professionals and 11,141 premises.
These figures are the Board’s own, presented at a promotional summit. PPB did not state the period any of them covers, nor publish comparative figures for earlier years, so they cannot be read as evidence of change in either direction.
Two services have been digitised: Practice360, covering registration, licensing and professional development for pharmacists and pharmaceutical technologists, and Facility360, covering premises licensing, inspection and compliance. The public can verify a pharmacy’s licence by scanning the QR code on it.
The Board urged the public to buy medicines only from licensed pharmacies, verify the status of professionals and premises, confirm products are PPB-registered, and report suspected substandard or falsified products and unexpected reactions through its official channels.
Source: Remarks by Dr Ahmed Mohamed, chief executive, Pharmacy and Poisons Board, at the Kenya Health Summit 2026
