Residents in Mathare North will start receiving health services from the newly built Mathare- Korogocho Level Five Hospital in May.
This comes as the Nairobi Metropolitan Service aims to commission the hospital in April as construction works end in March.
NMS Director-General Mohammed Badi on Saturday said that after the infrastructural bit is complete, NMS will embark on employing staff.
“NMS will start employing health workers; doctors, nurses and other staff to cater for the hospital to be operational hopefully by the end of April if we receive the money to buy the equipment," he said.
It is expected that the hospital will have more than 300 workers drawn from different cadres of health professionals.
Badi revealed that the process of procurement for equipment was already ongoing after NMS following a request the National Government to set aside funds for the purchase of hospital equipment.
The newly-built Mathare-Korogocho hospital will be a five-storey building with Badi revealing it will have its own Intensive Care Unit (ICU), patient admission wards, pharmacy, morgue, kidney dialysis centre and theatres.
The facility will be at the same level as Mama Lucy Hospital which is also being upgraded by the Badi-led team.
Works at the Mathare- Korogocho facility commenced in July after President Uhuru Kenyatta directed NMS to upgrade it.
Consequently, Sh400 million was set aside for the purpose of rehabilitating the health facility that had stalled since the early 1990s.
In 2014, a report by the County Government of Nairobi revealed that there were 76 public health facilities inclusive of health centres and dispensaries.
However, access to health services had been a pipe dream to many city residents living in the informal settlements.
As a result, NMS pledged to build 24 hospitals in Nairobi’s informal settlements.
According to DG Badi, the additional hospitals will help reduce the burden on Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH), Mama Lucy, Pumwani and Mbagathi Hospitals.
The hospitals are in Viwandani, Majengo, Mathare, Kayole, Soweto, Korogocho, Kawangware, Gitare Marigu, Mukuru Kwa Njenga, Mukuru Kwa Reuben, Kibera and Githurai 44.
Nine out of the 24 health facilities would be built from scratch while the rest (five) would be rehabilitated.
Ten of the facilities to be built will be Level 2 hospitals and the rest will be Level 3.
Level-5 health facilities are known as county referral hospitals and have more than 100-bed capacities.
They are run by chief executive officers who must be medical doctors.
The facility should handle more than 250 patients daily and have the capacity to manage medical, paediatric, surgical and gynaecological in-patients.
It should also offer renal dialysis, radiology services, tuberculosis management, mortuary and autopsy services, 24-hour pharmacy, pathology, chemotherapy and forensic services.
A level 5 hospital should be built on at least 10 acres or 5,000 square metres. It should have inpatient and outpatient pharmacies, burns unit and a staff quarters for at least eight people on duty.
Besides a medical superintendent, Level 5 hospitals should have at least 15 medical officers, seven anesthesiologists, two cardiologists, four general surgeons and two orthopaedic surgeons.
Another requirement is that it should employ at least 90 clinical officers, 118 nurses with specialists spread across different departments, 11 pharmacists and 10 pharmaceutical technologists.
