The Sh400 million refurbished Mathare-Korogocho Hospital is to be commissioned in July, offering a full range of treatment.
The Level 5 hospital will reduce overcrowding and intake at Mama Lucy Hospital, the main health facility in Eastlands.
Quality and accessible healthcare have become a luxury beyond the reach of residents of informal settlements.
As a result, President Uhuru Kenyatta directed Nairobi Metropolitan Services to set up 24 hospitals across informal settlements.
NMSdirector general Mohammed Badi said work is 80 to 90 per cent complete on the five-story Mathare-Korogocho Hospital.
“Korogocho-Mathare North Hospital will be opened hopefully at the beginning of July," Badi said.
"We (NMS) are sure when we get medical equipment promised by the Health CS (Mutahe Kagwe), we will be able to operationalise the hospital at beginning of July,” he said.
The hospital will have patient wards, theatres, an intensive care unit, kidney dialysis centre, emergency department, a morgue with autopsy services and other facilities.
Mama Lucy too is being upgraded by NMS to Level 5.
Korogocho-Mathare had been constructed in the early 1990s but was grounded and NMS is overseeing its revival.
Level 5 health facilities are known as county referral hospitals and should have more than 100 beds. They are run by chief executive officers who must be medical doctors.
They should be built on at lest 10 acres. They must have inpatient and outpatient pharmacies, a burns unit and staff quarters for at least eight people on duty.
Level 5 hospitals should be able to handle more than 250 patients daily and manage medical, paediatric, surgical and gynaecological in-patients.
They should provide radiology services, tuberculosis management, pathology, chemotherapy and forensic services.
Besides a medical superintendent, Level 5 hospitals should have at least 15 medical officers, seven anaesthesiologists, two cardiologists, four general surgeons and two orthopaedic surgeons.
They should employ at least 90 clinical officers, 118 nurses with specialists spread across different departments, 11 pharmacists and 10 pharmaceutical technologists.
The hospitals ordered by the President are in Viwandani, Majengo, Mathare, Kayole, Soweto, Korogocho, Kawangware, Gitare Marigu, Mukuru Kwa Njenga, Mukuru Kwa Reuben, Kibera and Githurai 44.
Nineteen out of the 24 health facilities are being built from scratch while the other five are being rehabilitated, including Korogocho-Mathare.
Ten of the facilities to be built from scratch will be Level 2, the rest will be Level 3.
The President has already commissioned four of the 24 hospitals. The Uthiru-Muthua Hospital is Level 3 while the other three — Kiamaiko, Soweto and Ushirika — are Level 2 facilities, or dispensaries.
Six more facilities are expected to be commissioned within a month.
(Edited by V. Graham)