How staff, outsider at Moi Hospital stole Sh10 million from patients

Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret. [File, Standard] For more than a year, patients who walked into Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret believed they were paying their medical bills directly into the government's accounts. They trusted the system, handed over their money, and left with official receipts. Unbeknownst to them, investigators now allege, a section of that money was being diverted into private hands through a scheme that exploited one of the hospital's own employees. What has emerged from police files and court testimony is a picture of sustained fraud that went undetected for 13 months. At the centre of the investigations are Jane Wangari Wachira, a hospital employee, and Khamisi Hussein Akida, a man from outside the institution. Together, they are accused of stealing Sh10 million meant for the hospital. The lead investigator, Edwin Chirchir, told Eldoret Chief Magistrate Peter Ndwiga that the two suspects exploited the government's eCitizen payment system to pull off the fraud. Between January last year and February this year, Wachira, who worked in a section that handles patient billing, allegedly used her access to the platform to clear hospital bills without depositing any money into the hospital's official accounts. According to the investigating officer, patients were asked to pay their bills in cash or through personal M-Pesa numbers linked to Akida. This happened even though the hospital has a widely publicised PayBill number-222222-that is meant to be used for all payments. Patients, many of whom were desperate to settle bills and take their sick relatives home, complied. Once the cash changed hands, Wachira would log into the eCitizen system and mark the patients' accounts as fully paid. From the outside, everything looked legitimate. Patients walked out with official receipts, and the hospital's internal records showed no outstanding balances. But the money never reached the hospital. "The suspect would access the platform and clear the bills without a single cent going to the hospital's bank account," Chirchir told the court, describing how the two are believed to have worked together to bypass the payment system. The fraud was eventually uncovered not by a tip-off, but by the hospital's internal audit team. On February 5 this year, auditors noticed a discrepancy in the accounts. The numbers did not add up. After a closer look, they realised that about Sh10 million in patient bills had been marked as paid, but no corresponding deposits had been made. The matter was formally reported to the police on February 9, under OB number 13/9/2/2026. Within days, Akida was picked up by detectives. According to police, he led them to Wachira, who was arrested shortly after. The two are now being held at Naiberi Police Station. The court has granted detectives ten more days to complete their investigations, with the next mention set for February 26. They are expected to face charges including conspiracy to defraud and offences related to the misuse of computers. But investigators believe the two may not have acted alone. In a revelation that has sent jitters through the hospital's administration, Officer Chirchir told the court that senior officials in the Finance and Information Technology departments are now being investigated. Detectives want to establish whether these managers provided what the investigator termed a "technical backdoor" that enabled the manipulation of the eCitizen system without triggering any alarms. "We suspect this is part of a wider network," Chirchir said, adding that the Communications Authority has been brought in to assist with digital forensics. Investigators are now going through transaction records, mobile phone data, and CCTV footage from the hospital. The case has also raised fresh concerns about the eCitizen platform itself, which the government has promoted as a tool for transparency and efficiency. The fraud at MTRH is not the first time questions have been asked about the system. In a recent audit covering the financial year ending June 2024, Auditor-General Nancy Gathungu revealed that Sh44.8 billion collected through eCitizen could not be traced. The audit also found that the government had handed back effective control of the platform to the private vendor, Webmasters Kenya Ltd. More troubling, four transactions totalling Sh127.85 million made in January 2024 were transferred from the government's official PayBill number directly to private companies without documentation or approval. The MTRH fraud, investigators say, appears to have exploited the same kind of weakness. Without real-time reconciliation between payments received and bills cleared, such schemes can go unnoticed for long periods. The hospital has not issued an official statement on the matter, but sources within the administration say steps are being taken to tighten controls. The hospital, which traces its roots to a small Native Cottage Hospital built in 1917, has grown into one of East Africa's largest referral centres. It serves more than 25 million people from Kenya and neighbouring countries, including Uganda, South Sudan, Tanzania, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is the second-largest public hospital in Kenya, with a bed capacity of over 1,000. Its transformation began in 1986 with the construction of the Nyayo Wards, which added more beds and expanded services. In 1998, through Legal Notice Number 78, it was formally gazetted as a national teaching and referral hospital, taking on the name of former President Daniel Moi. It became a teaching facility for Moi University's College of Health Sciences and has since grown into a centre of specialised medicine. Today, the hospital conducts cochlear and kidney transplants, open-heart surgeries, and complex neurosurgical procedures. It is home to the Chandaria Cancer and Chronic Diseases Centre, the Shoe4Africa Children's Hospital, and the AMPATH Centre, which is the largest single-centre HIV/AIDS treatment facility in Africa. It also trains hundreds of doctors and medical students each year. More than 240 post-graduate students are enrolled in specialist programmes at the hospital, alongside 1,200 students in its medical training college. The hospital handles over 1.5 million patient visits annually, performs more than 60,000 surgeries, and runs over two million laboratory tests.

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