NAIROBI, Kenya, September 29, 2026 — Kenya’s private healthcare providers are set to gain access to a new supply-chain partner as Mission for Essential Drugs and Supplies (MEDS) expands its operations to serve hospitals, pharmacies, laboratories and other private-sector healthcare institutions.
MEDS has launched MEDS Devane Company Limited (MDCL), a commercial entity that will begin operations on November 1, 2026, providing quality-assured medicines, medical consumables, diagnostics, laboratory products, equipment and specialised healthcare supplies.
The move comes as healthcare providers increasingly require dependable access to essential products, alongside stronger quality assurance and timely delivery systems.
MDCL Chair of the Board, Rt. Rev. Benard Owuor, said the company was established to respond to the changing demands of private healthcare providers.
“As Kenya’s healthcare landscape continues to evolve, the private healthcare sector, pharmacies and other healthcare institutions require a commercially responsive partner that understands the urgency, complexity and responsibility of healthcare delivery,” Owuor said.
Unlike a conventional commercial distributor, MDCL will draw on four decades of experience accumulated by MEDS in healthcare supply and quality assurance. The company will initially concentrate on Kenya before exploring opportunities in selected East African markets.
MEDS Chief Executive Officer Dr. Wycliffe Nandama, who will also serve as MDCL’s Acting General Manager, said the new venture would focus on ensuring that healthcare providers receive products when they need them while maintaining quality standards.
“Today’s healthcare customers need more than products on a shelf. They need quality assurance, dependable availability, timely delivery, professional support and a partner who understands that every product supplied can have a direct impact on patient care,” Nandama said.
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The launch coincides with MEDS’ 40th anniversary, marking the organisation’s transformation from a small operation founded in 1986 into a major healthcare supply organisation serving facilities across Kenya.
MEDS currently stocks more than 2,000 health products and technologies and serves more than 10,000 clients in all 47 counties. Its quality control laboratory, which is prequalified by the World Health Organization, has supported quality assurance activities in more than 46 countries.
The laboratory analysed about 2,350 samples in 2025, highlighting the organisation’s wider role in monitoring the quality of health products.
Health Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale EGH said such quality assurance capacity was critical to protecting patients from substandard and falsified medical products.
He noted MEDS’ collaboration with the Pharmacy and Poisons Board on laboratory testing and post-market surveillance, as well as its WHO prequalification, ISO 9001:2015 certification and ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation.
Duale also linked reliable healthcare supply chains to the Government’s universal health coverage agenda, noting that access to healthcare depends not only on the availability of facilities and health workers but also on the availability of quality-assured medicines.
“Universal health coverage is realised at the point of care,” he said, adding that quality-assured medicine must be available when it is needed.
MDCL is named after Rev. Sr. Joan Devane, the American medical missionary and pharmacist who founded MEDS in a small warehouse in Ruaraka with only 30 products.
As MEDS enters its fifth decade, the organisation is also strengthening supply-chain skills through the newly launched MEDS-Strathmore Supply Chain Academy.
The academy is expected to build on MEDS’ health systems strengthening programmes, which reach more than 20,000 healthcare workers annually.
According to MEDS, the two initiatives are part of its broader effort to strengthen healthcare systems by combining reliable product supply, quality assurance and professional capacity development.
“Our ambition is not only to grow a successful company, but to grow a trusted company,” Owuor said.
MDCL will open for business on November 1, positioning the new venture to become another link between manufacturers and healthcare providers as Kenya’s health sector continues to evolve.
