Nairobi, March 5 -- He rocks up for the meeting quietly and on time. One dark car, one light bodyguard, a driver. He is dark himself. When he emerges from his car - tall, starched in an immaculate suit - I tell him I expected a more ostentatious entrance. "Oh, this is even a lot," he says. "Normally, I would drive myself."

It is, it turns out, a perfectly accurate introduction to Dr Ouma Oluga, Principal Secretary for Medical Services. No fanfare. No retinue. Just a man and his reputation, a physician and technocrat who somewhere along the way ended up deep inside the machinery of Kenya's Health ministry, the most senior doctor in it. The journey here has been anything but quiet.

He has been a student leader, a continental voice for med...