Services at the St Mary's Hospital in Lang'ata were on Friday, December 19, brought to a standstill after alleged goons infiltrated the facility and seized control.
The goons were filmed welding metal doors, breaking into residential employees' quarters, shutting down the central administration, and attempting to block access to the facility.
This group is said to have accompanied Dr William Charles Fryder, who claims ownership of the hospital as the founder. According to Fryder, some individuals have taken over the running of the hospital, which he claims to have built with the help of donors.
Fryder and the current hospital leadership were engulfed in an altercation when all the chaos was happening.
"We had created this hospital. Another group, unfortunately, grabbed it under questionable circumstances," Fryder stated.
The current management challenged the legitimacy of the move, stating that no court orders had been issued.
"We have not been served with any order. Upon arriving, we discovered that they were breaking into offices and welding doors, preventing the people who had been running the hospital from accessing the facility," stated Wanja Wambugu, the advocate for St Mary's Hospital.
According to documents presented by Fryder, he left Nazareth Mission Hospital in 1995. He began establishing St Mary's Hospitals, acquiring 10 acres of land in collaboration with the Assumption Sisters of Nairobi in 1997.
The hospital was officially licenced in 2000 under St Mary's Mission Hospital, Nairobi Limited. A new company was later registered in 2010, excluding Fryder's name, which intensified the ownership conflict.
St Mary's is a crucial hospital that serves between 800 and 1,000 outpatients per day and an average of over 900 deliveries per month.
This disruption left patients stranded with no medical personnel to attend to them. One of the carers to a patient cried out that his patient was to be in the Intensive Care Unit, but because of the wrangles, he was in bed.
"The senior doctor said he should be in the ICU right now; why should the patient stay in bed without treatment?" she asked.
For now, the fate of the hospital remains up in the air, as the two groups tussle for control.
