St Mary’s Hospital, Mumias served patients from the four Western Kenya counties of Kakamega, Busia, Bungoma, and Vihiga, and beyond
After more than a century, the hospital in Kakamega County, has ceased operations. The hospital’s staff received email notifications from the Human Resource department on July 1, 2025, telling them not to report for work until further notice.
Workers at the hospital had downed tools a few days earlier in protest after going without pay for four months. The inability to pay the workers their salaries is majorly attributed to a failure by the Social Health Authority (SHA) to remit funds to the hospital.
“St Mary’s Hospital was owed a lot of money by the defunct NHIF and is also owed quite a lot by the Social Health Authority (SHA). This is what has caused that great hospital to fail.
There is a major problem with SHA, and it is not a political problem, it is a designed problem,” Rural and Urban Private Hospitals Association of Kenya chairman Brian Makamu Lishenga says.
Despite the hospital’s closure, however, the Comprehensive Care Unit (CCU), which handles patients suffering from HIV/AIDS, the Renal Unit and the mortuary are still operational.
Services offered by these departments are contracted and operate independently.
SHA has been in the limelight for approving payments to ghost hospitals while real hospitals that have rendered services to patients are sidelined.