AAR to shut Tanzania clinics on rising financial woes

AAR Healthcare Ltd is set to exit Tanzania on reduced visitor numbers to its eight clinics and financial troubles worsened by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The healthcare provider announced in a memo to staff, it has started the winding-up process since it can no longer meet its obligations to employees and creditors in a timely manner.

“The company’s parent AAR Healthcare Holdings is no longer willing to support the financial requirements of the company (AAR Healthcare Tanzania Limited) and it is on this basis that the Board of Directors have resolved to initiate a creditors’ voluntary winding up process,” said AAR Healthcare Limited acting chief executive Andrew Rowell.

The winding up process involves converging a meeting of the company’s creditors to formally agree on appointing liquidators.

The creditors meeting is set to take place on April 22.

Mr Rowell assured staff their employment contracts remain intact and business operations would continue uninterrupted pending the creditors meeting.

AAR started operations in Kenya in 1984 offering medical evacuation services by road and air. The company expanded to Tanzania in 2007 after being granted an insurance licence, setting its sights on an ambitious expansion programme.

In 2011, the AAR Group’s shareholders resolved to separate the business into two distinct units, AAR Healthcare and AAR Insurance.

The insurance wing exited Tanzania in 2019.

AAR Healthcare also has operations in Uganda where it launched in 1994 and Kigali where it unveiled in 2005 bringing to four the countries the healthcare provider operates.

AAR Healthcare (K) Limited is the largest provider of out-patient healthcare services in the East Africa region running a network of 18 medical centres in Kenya.