UPDATE: March 22, 2021, 6:30 pm: The family of the late Lorna Irungu has announced that her interment will be on Tuesday, March 23, 2021 in a private family function.
The family has asked Kenyans to accord the privacy to grieve the loss of the mother of one.
"The family knows that Lorna is deeply loved by many and asks for your continued prayers and requests privacy during this difficult time but also informs that a public virtual celebration of her life will be organized and details will be communicated shortly," the statement read.
Media veteran Lorna Irungu has passed on according to reports by her former colleagues at Nation Media Group. At the time of her death, she was the CEO of Gina Din Group.
"Lorna Irungu-Macharia has succumbed to Covid-19; the former Gina Din Group Managing Director, who was also a media personality, has been a Lupus survivor for over 20 years and had undergone several kidney transplants," tweeted NTV news anchor Dan Mwangi.
Lorna's husband Edwin Macharia posted a heart break emoji as friends and family added their condolences.
She is best remembered for the Omo-Pick-A-Box show that was popular in the 1990s. She hosted the show alongside Regina Mutoko.
Lorna was a pioneer of TV shows at a time when the government opened the airwaves, giving way to the establishment of private media houses to compete with KBC.
At the height of her career, she had worked in all mainstream media station apart from Royal Media Services.
After the popular Omo-Pick-A-Box show, Irungu went on to host Club Kiboko for five years between 1994 and 1999, while also producing magazine show Maisha and a youth dialogue dubbed Niaje.
She later hosted State of The Nation at then-Nation FM. The show revolved around political, social and economic issues affecting the country.
However, in 2007, her life took a turn after she was diagnosed with kidney failure.
She had undergone her first kidney transplant in 1998 at Nairobi Hospital after her father donated the organ to her. In 2000, the kidney got infected and her sister offered her another.
The 2007 kidney failure, her third, saw her brother offer her his kidney. However, the procedure was expensive locally, forcing her to send emails of her medical history to countries abroad.
She was lucky when doctors at Fortis Hospital in New Delhi, India, responded to her calls, leading to a successful transplant in 2008.
