The St. Mary’s Mission Hospital in Mumias, Kakamega County, has closed its doors after 117 years of service despite receiving Ksh83 million in SHA payments, citing unpaid dues and financial strain.
The shutdown has left an estimated 300 patients who sought daily care without a facility to turn to and rendered more than 200 staff members jobless.
The Catholic-run facility, which has long been a referral point for patients from Mumias, Butere, Busia, and parts of Bungoma, announced the closure, citing financial strain caused by delayed payments from a government health insurance program.
The management claimed it was owed more than Ksh180 million, a shortfall that crippled its ability to continue operations.
MOH records reveal payments to St. Mary’s Hospital
Ministry of Health records show that St. Mary’s received a total of Ksh82,908,590 in Social Health Authority (SHA) disbursements between November 2024 and July 2025. The hospital had submitted claims amounting to Ksh117,732,837.
According to the official MoH document referenced as FID-37-109324-3, the hospital received the following amounts in the specified months: Ksh 12,990,970 in November 2024, Ksh 12,367,600 in December, Ksh 13,158,560 in January 2025, Ksh 11,860,170 in February, Ksh 16,195,400 in March, Ksh 10,440,180 in April, Ksh 616,370 in May, and Ksh 5,279,340 in July 2025.
The records further indicate that Ksh10.2 million worth of claims could not be verified due to missing or incomplete documentation.
In some instances, the facility did not submit supportive papers, which prevented the full processing of the hospital’s requests.
At the same time, the Ministry of Health confirmed that arrears under the defunct National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) remain unresolved.
The NHIF balances for St. Mary’s are currently under verification by the Office of the Auditor General following a court ruling. Payment will only be made once the audit process is concluded.
Facility shuts down
On July 1, 2025, the hospital’s staff received email notifications from the Human Resources department telling them not to report for work until further notice.
Workers at the St. Mary’s Mumias 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 primarily attributed to the Social Health Authority’s (SHA) failure to remit funds to the hospital.
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“St. Mary’s Hospital 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 St. Mary’s Mumias hospital’s closure, 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 of one another. The media team found the mortuary and the renal unit operational, with dialysis machines running as patients finished their three-hour sessions.
Mudavadi addresses the claims
Speaking in Malava constituency during a burial ceremony, Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi commented on the case of St. Mary’s Hospital in Mumias, which he said claimed Ksh117 million under the SHA program and had already received Ksh82 million.
He dismissed allegations that the Ministry of Health was responsible for the facility’s financial troubles, saying records showed payments had been disbursed.
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Mudavadi further accused certain politicians and health facilities of peddling falsehoods to discredit the scheme.
He cautioned that mismanagement by individual hospitals should not be used to condemn SHA, adding that the government remained committed to addressing challenges in the program’s rollout.
He insisted that accountability must also be demanded from hospitals benefiting from SHA funds, not just from government officials.
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