Senate moves in to quell Kenyatta University, referral hospital tussle

The Senate Committee on Health has been dragged into a vicious tug-of-war between Kenyatta University and the KU Teaching and Referral Hospital (KUTRRH) over training of medical students.

Committee members led by the Chairperson, Uasin Gishu Senator Jackson Mandago visited both institutions on Monday on a fact-finding mission following a petition by students of the University over allegedly being locked from accessing the hospital’s facilities for teaching and training purposes.

The two public institutions have been embroiled into a two-year supremacy battle over who owns KUTRRH.

The management row between the head of Kenyatta University, Vice Chancellor Prof Paul Wainaina and his former boss, now chairing the board of the KUTRRH Prof Olive Mugenda is reported to have led to suffering by KU medical students.

In its conception stage, the hospital was thought to be a solution to the problem of training and practicals for KU medical students by using the facility as a centre of excellence in research and capacity-building.

It was also envisaged to reverse outbound medical tourism, provide specialised medical care, enhance access to healthcare and provide the safest and most effective evidence-based care.

While in its advanced stages of integrating the hospital as part of the university, Legal Notice No 4 of 2019 was invoked delinking the hospital from the university after it became a new parastatal.

During the visit by senators, it emerged that university management has been fighting for control of the hospital which is registered as a standalone state corporation despite having been initiated by the former.

Addressing journalists after the meeting Mandago acknowledged that there was no doubt the hospital is a parastatal but insisted they were investigating the intrigues behind failure by the hospital to accommodate KU students for learning and research purposes. “…Because this is a country that runs through legislation and legal notice, there is a legal gazette notice establishing this hospital as a parastatal. We will not speak beyond that as we have to make our final report and table before the house,” said Mandago.

During the deliberations, KUTRRH Board Chairperson Prof Olive Mugenda said the hospital had not denied medical students access to its facilities for training purposes as earlier claimed by the KU administration.

Prof Mugenda took the occasion to explain that she or her board had no problem with allowing KU students to train at the facility and explained that the Health Cabinet Secretary has since intervened and granted the hospital the legal mandate to offer training to university students.