How to check whether a doctor or dentist is registered in Kenya

Before you let someone extract a tooth, prescribe a course of treatment or operate, you are entitled to know that they are allowed to. In Kenya, medical doctors, dentists and community oral health officers are regulated by the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Council (KMPDC), which also registers and licenses health facilities. The Council publishes its registers online and offers an SMS check. This post explains how to use both, and how to read what comes back.

Step 1: search the online registers

The Council's registers are at registers.kmpdc.go.ke. When we opened the site in October 2026 it offered the following registers from its menu.

Choose the register that fits the person or place you are checking. For a dentist or doctor in private practice, start with Licensed Practitioners; if the practitioner trained abroad or you have been told they are a visiting specialist, try Foreign Practitioners as well. Search by name or, better, by registration number, which should be displayed at the clinic or printed on receipts and prescriptions. Names are often entered in a different order from the one on a signboard, so if a name search finds nothing, try the surname alone before concluding anything.

Step 2: use the SMS check on 20547

The Council also runs an SMS service on short code 20547. The formats, as reported when the service was publicised in May 2023, are:

In a November 2023 report in the Daily Nation, the Council's chief executive described the number as toll-free and said that if the name you send does not appear in the reply, the person or facility is not registered or licensed. We have not confirmed the cost with the Council or with individual mobile networks ourselves, so if cost matters to you, check with your network before relying on the service for repeated queries. If the SMS reply is unclear, the online register is the more detailed source.

Step 3: understand registered versus licensed

This is the point most people miss. Registration is granted once, after qualification and internship, and stays on the record. A licence to practise has to be renewed, and it can lapse or be suspended. The Council's own dashboard shows how large the difference is.

Roughly a third of registered practitioners did not hold a current licence when we looked. Some will have retired, moved abroad or be working outside clinical practice, but the lesson for a patient is the same: look for a current licence, not just a registration entry. The same applies to facilities, where about 6,000 registered premises were not licensed and a separate register lists facilities that have been closed.

What the register does and does not tell you

A register entry confirms that a person holds a recognised qualification and, if licensed, is currently permitted to practise. It does not tell you whether they are a specialist in the field they advertise, how experienced they are, what they charge or whether the clinic has the equipment for the procedure you need. For a specialist claim, ask which register entry shows the specialist recognition, and ask to see the certificate. For facilities, the licence covers the premises and its level, not every service a signboard might promise.

If you find that a practitioner or facility is not on the register, or that a licence has lapsed, you can report it to the Council. You can also use our report form for any HealthNaro listing that appears to be inaccurate; we check the register ourselves before we mark a practitioner's credentials as verified.

How we checked these figures

We opened registers.kmpdc.go.ke in October 2026, read the register menu as presented, and copied the dashboard counts, which we have rounded. We read the Kenyans.co.ke article of 8 May 2023 for the SMS formats, and the Daily Nation report of 11 November 2023 for the Council's description of the service as toll-free. We did not independently confirm the cost of the SMS, which is why the post advises checking with your network. The Council's main website returned no readable content when we tried to open it, so only the registers site is linked.

If you are looking for a dentist or a doctor whose registration we have already checked, the general dentistry and general practice pages show each provider's verification level. You can also tell us what you need and we will help you find a suitable clinic; the service is free.