By Benadeta Mwaura - Reporter
Kenya, December 6 2025 - On a calm morning in Nairobi, 110 new mothers at Mama Lucy Kibaki Hospital still lay in cramped beds, some with newborns, others recovering from surgery. Weeks after bringing new lives into the world, they couldn’t go home. Not because the wards lacked beds. Not because doctors withheld treatment. But because they, or their families, hadn’t paid their medical bills.
One by one, they were discharged not by doctors, but by the wallet. Until a former governor stepped in. On 4 November 2025, former Nairobi Governor Mike Sonko announced he had settled the hospital bills for 110 mothers at Mama Lucy Hospital. He told reporters the total bill was about KSh 1.6 million, but the hospital management reportedly gave him a 20% discount.
“Today marked a very significant day … for me and 110 mothers who were released from Mama Lucy Hospital after I settled their bills,” Sonko said. Along with bill clearance, he pledged to cover the women’s premiums under the Social Health Authority (SHA), promising them long-term access to medical services without fear of sudden bills.
For many of those mothers, some clutching fragile newborns, what should have been a celebration of life became a bittersweet tug-of-war between relief and loss. Hospital sources told reporters some of the women had lost their babies while still detained.
Yet while Sonko’s intervention offered temporary relief and made headlines, it raised deeper questions: Why are Kenyan hospitals detaining mothers, or bodies, over bills in the first place? And how many more families suffer in silence? The courts strike back on Dead bodies as collateral: The plight of living patients is only half the story. For those who die in hospital, unpaid bills have often meant their remains are held hostage.
In a landmark ruling on 23 September 2025, Justice Nixon Sifuna declared such detentions unlawful. The case involved Mater Hospital, which had been holding the body of a woman, Caroline Nthangu Tito, because her family had not paid KSh 3.3 million for her treatment and hospital stay.
“There is no property in a dead body, and correspondingly there cannot be a right of lien on it,” Justice Sifuna ruled. Holding bodies as security for debts, he added, “traumatises the bereaved family and disrespects the departed.”
The ruling ordered Mater to release Caroline’s body upon payment of only the mortuary fees, the remainder of the debt, the court said, should be pursued through ordinary civil processes, not through denial of burial.
Beyond Mater, courts have long held that detaining patients for inability to pay is unconstitutional. In past cases (e.g. MAO & Another v Attorney General & 4 Others, and Gideon Kilundo & Daniel Kilundo Mwenga v Nairobi Women’s Hospital) judges declared such detention arbitrary and ordered immediate release.
Legal push, activism and hope for reform
A proposed Health (Amendment) Bill, 2025 has been tabled in parliament, seeking to finally put into law what Kenyan courts and human-rights groups have been saying for years: that no patient, living or dead, should ever be detained in a hospital because they cannot pay their bills.
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The Bill amends the Health Act by inserting a new clause that expressly outlaws the detention of patients and the holding of bodies as collateral for medical debt. Under the proposal, any hospital or administrator who detains a person or a corpse over unpaid fees commits an offence. The aim is simple but profound: to draw a clear line between legitimate billing and the violation of human dignity.
The Bill, therefore, does not remove a hospital’s right to charge for services; instead, it shifts debt recovery from coercive, illegal practices to formal, humane mechanisms such as payment plans or civil processes.
Rights groups say this is the only way to protect vulnerable Kenyans, especially poor families and new mothers, who often find themselves trapped in wards long after treatment ends.
The legal victory and public outcry gave fresh momentum to activists and regulators. On 18 November 2025, the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Council (KMPDC) issued a stern notice reminding hospitals, mortuaries and funeral homes that detaining bodies over unpaid medical bills is illegal, a violation of the constitutional right to dignity under Article 28, and potentially a criminal offence under Section 137 of the Penal Code.
KMPDC declared that releasing the body does not extinguish the hospital’s right to recover its debt, but hospitals must now seek lawful ways to pursue payment. Meanwhile, the pressure is mounting on lawmakers. A petition in parliament highlighted the detainment of the body of Priscilla Nyokabi Gaku, held by a facility from 30 May 2024, demanding urgent action and reforms.
On the ground, advocacy groups such as KELIN Kenya have condemned the detention of mothers as “a grave human rights violation” and urged the government to act swiftly, not only through courts, but through policy change and mechanisms to help vulnerable patients access care without fear.
Whose side is the system on?
Still, not everyone agrees on the fixes. The Ministry of Health and some private hospitals have argued that banning detention outright could undermine mortuary services, which are themselves fee-based, and hurt already strapped health facilities. At hearings before the Senate Health Committee, the Ministry argued that non-payment should be handled administratively, not criminalised.
But Senate Health Committee Chair Jackson Mandago responded by clarifying: the proposed bill does not target mortuary services. It targets the act of detaining patients or corpses as collateral for bills. He said the courts have already ruled such detentions unlawful and urged implementation, not back-pedalling.
For now, the future remains uncertain. But the stories of Caroline, whose body was detained for months, and the 110 mothers at Mama Lucy, some still mourning lost infants, have forced a national reckoning: health care is not a luxury; death is not collateral; dignity must not be on the docket.
