Right from the beginning of 2025, the Kiambu County Government has concentrated on building new hospitals and supplying new equipment in them. Area governor Kimani Wamatangi recently revealed that a staggering Ksh.2.5 billion is being used to buy medical equipment such as suction machines, dental X-ray machines, dialysis machines, digital X-ray machines, and ultrasound units, among others.
He further announced that 13 hospitals would benefit from ultrasound machines while 9 of them would get digital X-ray machines, adding that the county’s 3 Level 5 hospitals, namely Thika, Gatundu, and Kiambu, would have modern dialysis machines. The machines will devolve quality health and better patient care to the grassroots, transforming health in villages of Kiambu where some hospitals have never been installed with state-of-the-art dialysis machines.
Kiambu Level 5 Hospital will have an endoscopy machine, enabling doctors to perform non-intrusive medical procedures using cameras for the overall safety and well-being of thousands of patients, and also reduce the need to travel abroad for such specialized services. “We have plans to install a CT-Scan machine here at the Kiambu hospital in a few months, and also replace the CT-Scan machine in Thika because the one being used now is not only old but depleted,” Wamatangi told Kiambu Observer at his office Tuesday, October 21, 2025.
Other successes included payment of the one billion KEMSA bill that the county owed before the new administration came into office, operationalization of broken-down ambulances, and ensuring at least 85% stock of pharmaceuticals and medicines in health facilities. However, members of the public have continued to question why the county government is using too many resources on new facilities and medical equipment rather than ensuring existing ones are fully functional.
Critics argue that the county government’s focus on infrastructure hasn’t translated into actual service delivery. “Even as the governor pump billions into healthcare systems, we still experience lack of health workers and most hospitals have no medicine,” said a county health official who spoke on grounds of anonymity. But in a quick rejoinder, Wamatangi says that the county’s health department is always overstretched by the influx of thousands of patients from neighbouring counties.
He attributed the perennial influx to better services and resources in Kiambu compared to neighbouring counties of Nairobi, Murang’a, Machakos, and Nakuru. “The high patients load not only contributes to shortage of drugs but also overworked the staff,” says the governor. Health services in the county have been in crisis for close to five months, characterized by work boycott and street demonstrations by doctors. The healthcare providers want the county government to increase their salaries, improve their working conditions, and also re-deploy striking personnel unconditionally.
