System Failure. MyDawa’s severe app crash left patients stranded without essential meds.

MyDawa, one of Kenya’s leading e-pharmacy startups, is facing a severe backlash following a catastrophic platform migration that left thousands of users unable to access medication. Intended to improve user experience, the November update instead wiped customer data—including order histories and delivery addresses—and triggered widespread payment processing failures. Tech-ish Kenya reports that patients relying on the service for urgent prescriptions, including baby formula and pain management drugs, were left stranded with unfulfilled orders and no way to track their payments.

The crisis highlights the fragility of digital-first health models when technical execution fails. While bugs are common in tech rollouts, the stakes in healthcare are life-critical. Compounding the technical failure was a reported breakdown in customer service, with users describing being "ghosted" by support teams despite having money deducted from their accounts. The incident is a significant stumble for MyDawa, which had recently secured major funding from the Gates Foundation-backed i3 program to expand across East Africa, serving as a cautionary tale that scaling health-tech requires operational resilience equal to its ambition.

Read the original article at: https://tech-ish.com/2025/12/01/mydawa-users-report-severe-app-website-failures-and-very-poor-customer-services/


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