Senior doctors and board members at Nairobi Hospital are at odds over a meeting with President William Ruto that has now widened a governance dispute into a public disagreement on who has authority to address internal concerns.
Doctors involved in the engagement say they were forced to escalate long-standing issues to State House after internal mechanisms failed to resolve what they describe as deep-rooted challenges within the institution. They maintain that repeated efforts to fix the problems from within did not succeed.
“We went to see the patron because we were totally frustrated… there was an epidemic of litigation in our hospital,” said Dr David Silverstein.
He said a group of five doctors and a lawyer met President Ruto on February 27,2026 at State House in what he described as a formal engagement.
According to Silverstein, the President used the meeting to understand the concerns raised and also questioned his role as patron of the hospital.
“He wanted to hear from each one of us what was the problem and why he was being called about it… he was not aware of this part of the constitution and how he could help,” he said.
The doctors accuse the hospital leadership of governance breakdowns, financial mismanagement and instability, arguing that the situation has affected confidence in the institution. Silverstein alleged there had been “a lot of misuse of mismanagement… a lot of money that has not been explained where it is,” adding that the hospital’s reputation had “severely deteriorated”.
Board members, however, have rejected the allegations and questioned why the matter was taken outside internal structures.
Board member Eric Ooko said he only became aware of the State House engagement after President Ruto publicly criticised the hospital leadership during a rally in Cheptais, Mount Elgon, where he referred to board members as “fraudsters, charlatans and conmen”.
President Ruto has defended his involvement, saying he acted following appeals from stakeholders in his capacity as patron.
“As President of the Republic of Kenya and as patron of Nairobi Hospital, senior doctors and professionals approached me to save Nairobi Hospital from conmen, fraudsters and charlatans,” he said.
“We are going to protect Nairobi Hospital from charlatans, crooks, conmen and fraudsters,” the President added.
State House officials say the President received several petitions raising concerns about governance and financial management at the hospital and that consultative meetings were held with stakeholders and government agencies to address the dispute.
Despite this, the board insists the President does not have executive authority over the institution.
“The patron of this hospital exercises zero veto over this board,” Ooko said, maintaining that established internal procedures should have been followed.
The standoff has now spilled into a wider national conversation on governance, institutional independence, and the limits of presidential patronage in private entities.