Sisto Mazzoldi Hospital in Rongai, Nakuru County. (Inset) Agnes Chelang'at, who died at the facility in unclear circumstances.
Amos Kiprop worked as a radiographer at Sisto Mazzoldi Hospital in Nakuru for nearly two years, until something very unusual happened and he decided to speak out.
Not only was he resilient in his efforts to highlight this matter, he also demonstrated resilience during his two years working as a radiographer-turned-whistleblower at the hospital.
Amos Kiprop, a former radiographer at Sisto Mazzoldi Hospital.
“I am worried about somebody else, either a family member or myself. I took an oath as a health practitioner when I graduated, swearing that I would serve the public,” says Amos.
The basis of his fear is rooted in the day a life was lost in hospital. It is something all healthcare professionals are trained to deal with. However, this death bore all the hallmarks of a macabre plan to discard a human life with reckless abandon.
Located in Rongai area of Nakuru County, Sisto Mazzoldi Hospital, a faith-based level four health facility, was incorporated sometime in 1990 by the Catholic Church missionaries.
Amos’ fear was parallel to Wycliffe Nyachuba’s, a former nursing officer at the hospital. Their bravery forms the basis of this investigative report.
Wycliffe Nyachuba, a former nurse at Sisto Mazzoldi Hospital.
The story of 24-year-old Agnes Chelang’at is difficult to tell in full because she is no longer alive. However, her social media presence helps to paint a picture of the warmth and humour she radiated while carrying out her work as a farmer and running a shop.
Ambition was not the only thing that drove her daily efforts, though. She was also eagerly counting down the days to her due date, as a new life was growing within her. It was going to be her first child, and she wanted everything to be perfect.
Agnes Chelang'at, who died at Sisto Mazzoldi Hospital in unclear circumstances.
Agnes would, however, never get the chance to hold her baby in her arms.
Wycliffe was among the last people who saw Agnes as she came into Sisto Mazzoldi when her delivery date arrived. This was in 2024. As a nursing officer, he carried out his duties – monitoring her health, vitals and making sure she was attended to.
“We observed that her birth canal was too narrow, so she would not have given birth naturally. We recommended that she undergo a Caesarean Section and so we informed the doctor,” Wycliffe says.
Despite being a level four hospital that was meant to have a doctor on duty, Sisto Mazzoldi brought in doctors on a case-by-case basis.
Once the doctor came in and Wycliffe confirmed that Agnes was in good condition, he left since his shift had ended.
Disturbing evidence
“That was 4pm when I left the hospital premises. At 6:45 of that same evening, when I was watching football, I received a call from one of the nurses. She asked if I remembered the woman who had come into the hospital. I said yes. And she told me that she was dead,” says Wycliffe.
Fortunately, Agnes’ child survived. Her demise, however, was about to take a sinister turn as the hospital took every step possible to cover up what truly happened inside the theatre.
Documents obtained by the Nation show disturbing evidence of the manipulation of Agnes’ family in the plan to cover up her death.
According to the medical report written by the team who took over, at 4:30pm, after Wycliffe had left half an hour earlier, Agnes was wheeled into the theatre and at 4:40pm, when the surgery started. This is a highly unusual entry because surgeries do not start just ten minutes after a patient has been wheeled into the theatre.
Final conformations of equipment, monitoring of vitals, surgical scrubs, clothing the team in their gowns, gloves and the anaesthesia review can push the time into 40 to 60 minutes.
The report also states that the patient was put on anaesthesia at 4:42pm, yet they indicate that the surgery started at 4:40pm. This is incorrect as a patient cannot be operated on before they are put under anaesthesia.
The real shocker, however, is that there are two of these reports. One is the original, and another is a duplicate file filled with false entries of what took place, as part of the pyramid of manipulation created by the hospital’s management.
That same night, the theatre technician who had called Wycliffe to inform him of Agnes’s death called again at 9pm.
“She was calm and had reached her home. She informed me that the woman had died at around 6pm, and when the doctors realised that she was dead, they called the management of the hospital, who said they could not handle the death at the facility,” Wycliffe told Nation.
The management then decided to lie to the woman’s caretakers, who were waiting for her outside the theatre room, that she had a complication and needed to be referred to Nakuru PGH for ICU care.
A transcript of the conversation between Wycliffe and the theatre technician implicates the hospital’s management in the plan that was hatched. But more importantly, the transcript reviewed by Nation implicates the anaesthetist who handled Agnes as she was wheeled into the theatre.
The waiting bay at Sisto Mazzoldi Hospital in Rongai, Nakuru County
The medical report, both the original one and the duplicated one filled with falsehoods, has his fingerprints all over them. Through the scribbles and attempted erasure, the story of the cover up is laid bare.
Both reports form the first betrayal against Agnes. The anaesthetist, Victor Onsare, also fills in the section meant strictly for the doctor’s review.
In the outcome section of the report, he wrote the word “dead,” then he wrote “referred to”, then scribbled it out and wrote “for ICU care.” A medical report is a serious document that is meant to be recorded with the highest precision. His actions raise two pertinent questions: how could he indicate that a patient who was declared dead be referred for ICU care? And why?
Once again, Onsare filled out the duplicate report despite being the anaesthetist who was only meant to fill in one section.
He copied the same strange timings into this duplicate report, but possibly noted that it might be strange to fill out 4:40pm as the time the surgery started, yet just ten minutes earlier, Agnes had been wheeled into theater, so he scribbled six over the zero, which means, according to Onsare’s re-written version, surgery started at 4:46pm.
Duplicate file
Instead of ten minutes for the total time as he had indicated in the original report, he wrote 4:42 pm in the duplicate file, which is even more mind-blogging because this would mean that the whole process of a caesarean section on Agnes would have taken four minutes. A medical impossibility.
The last filled-in section, however, shows the true face of the lie. He completely obscures that Agnes was dead as a result of the procedure and instead notes that she was referred for ICU/HDU care.
This altered file is dangerous not just because of the lies in it. It is the file that was presented to Nakuru County’s health officials. Unknown to them is that it is a fake version.
The Clinical Officer’s Council confirmed that Victor Onsare was indeed a registered clinical officer.
During Wycliffe’s conversation with the theatre technician on the night Agnes died, she alluded that Victor had administered the incorrect amounts of anaesthesia to the patient before she was operated on, and that the team noticed her condition deteriorating. They then confirmed that she died on the operating table.
After several unsuccessful attempts to reach out to Victor, we established that he died in August 2025.
His family said he died in his house after a night shift at the hospital. He died from suffocation in unclear circumstances. They insist that he was a professional who was dedicated to his work.
While the reports heavily implicate Victor, he was not the only team member on duty that night. The Nation has identified the full team that was present when Agnes died on the operating table.
They included Dr Charles Kivumbi, an external doctor who was called in to conduct the Caesarean section on Agnes. Lydiah Auma and Milkah Mongare Kwamboka are listed as the first and second assistants during the procedure.
Milkah was also the person with whom Wycliffe spoke on the phone to confirm that Agnes had died on the operating table.
Milkah, however, in a phone interview, denied being present on the day Agnes’s surgery happened despite her name appearing in the theatre report.
The other nursing assistant, Lydia Auma, declined to comment and instead directed us to speak to the hospital’s management.
When asked why he did not fill out the medical report, which was strictly required of him, Dr Charles Kivumbi also directed us to the hospital.
Agnes was born and raised in Kapkatet, Nandi county, 124 kilometres North West of the Sisto Mazzoldi hospital. Her sister Mercy Cherutich witnessed those final moments.
“I tried asking them questions about what happened, but they would not answer me. I also touched my sister, and she was completely cold. I tried calling out to her, but there was no response. One of the staff members finally responded to me and told me she was just resting and that she was fine. I tried to open the sheet covering her, but they stopped me. I asked the nurse what had happened. She said that Agnes had been given a sleeping pill, which was still taking effect,” Mercy states.
Several members of the hospital staff, including Lydia Auma, the nurse who was in theatre, created a well-rehearsed narrative telling Mercy that her sister was asleep.
“I asked the staff where my sister's baby was. They said the baby was back in the hospital with Agnes’ mother-in-law. I asked why, yet when Agnes woke up, she would have wanted to be with her child. That’s when I felt that something was wrong, ” Mercy adds.
According to Standard Operating Procedures, a mother is supposed to be transferred with her child in the case of a hospital referral. The hospital did not do this because they were aware that Agnes was dead.
What they did next illustrates the lengths they went to cover up the death.
“We reached the Soilo area, and they suddenly stopped and said her condition had changed. I grabbed the nurse and asked her how her condition had changed, yet nothing had changed since we left the hospital. All the staff members jumped out and left me inside the ambulance with my sister. I saw them discussing among themselves only to come back and tell me that my sister had died,” Mercy says.
She found many of the hospital staff’s behaviour strange. They had wasted time waiting for her to arrive, despite indicating that her sister’s case was an emergency. The staff inside the ambulance claimed Agnes was asleep, yet she was unresponsive and cold.
Agnes’ uncle, Kipkurui Kemboi, spent the last few months with Agnes at the family home. He fondly called her “Ango.”
“We still have that scar…crying for help so that we know why she died because we were never told. Even the dead have their rights. Mercy’s sister also had rights, yet they called her to be part of their whole scheme when they knew Agnes was dead,” Kipkurui says.
“The Bible says that the truth will set you free. Sisto Mazzoldi Hospital should hear the plain truth…they hide in the church, yet they know nothing about the church,” Kipkurui adds.
After the staff believed that their cover up was successful. But they let a few things slip. Such as when they told Mercy that medicine had been injected into Agnes, and it was still at work.
This lends credence to the conversation between Wycliffe and the theatre technician who claimed Onsare was unable to wake Agnes up after injecting her with anaesthesia. It would also explain why it was Onsare, the anaesthetist, who took several measures to conceal the entries he made on the final report.
Avoid liability
But the buck did not stop with him. Daily Nation obtained evidence showing that the hospital’s management, led by one Sister Sofia Redempta, also altered the truth.
“If we say she died at 9:30pm, what time would we have left here, considering there was an ambulance and the driver waited for about one hour. Come to the hospital so we can finish with this report,” Sister Redempta is captured in a recorded phone conversation with Onsare.
The phone call that Wycliffe received from the theatre technician reveals that Agnes died at about 6:45pm, yet Sister Redempta wanted to alter this and instead indicate the time of death as 9:30pm. They did this to conceal the fact that Agnes had died at Sisto Mazzoldi Hospital, and instead indicate that she died along the way to another hospital to avoid liability.
The pharmacy and theatre wing at Sisto Mazzoldi Hospital in Rongai, Nakuru County.
The 9:30pm time stamp would also help to avert questions from the authorities on why Agnes had left the hospital so late for “referral.” We now know they left late because they waited for Mercy to have her as a witness for the sham referral they put on.
While Agnes spent most of the duration of her pregnancy in Nandi County, she opted to travel to Nakuru to deliver her child because it was closer to where her husband worked. But the reason she chose Sisto Mazoldi was that it aligned with her Christian faith.
“She loved the church, and hence the hospital aligned with her values. She always used to say that whenever a problem arose, we should be resilient,” Mercy states.
But why would the hospital go to such lengths to cover its tracks?
The reason may be linked to yet another case of an expectant mother who died under similar circumstances in the hospital.
The Cabinet Secretary for Health, Aden Duale, states that an analysis of maternal deaths in hospitals is a key point in the ministry’s agenda, as the rates are far too high, with 355 deaths reported per 100,000 live births, according to the 2019 census. However, an assessment on the latest numbers is being conducted, and results are expected by the end of February.
“One of the causes is medical negligence. In some situations, consultants are not in some of our hospitals, and referrals are not well-coordinated. The other thing we want to ensure is proper reporting, and that is what the president was insisting on because now we have the digital platform. If you look at the law, it is criminal to falsify data, particularly in that sector,” Mr Duale states
The grief caused by Agnes’ death is worn on her family’s sleeve. Her husband, who is now raising the child he and Agnes were meant to bring up together, cradles their fond memories close. We picked up snippets of his pain from his social media posts. For privacy reasons, he opted not to speak on record.
We reached out to Sister Sophia Redempta regarding the accusations levelled against her, including the alteration of medical files, defrauding NHIF and SHA, intimidation of employees, among other issues but she told us to get more information from Nakuru County.
When we reached out to the county, they acknowledged that an audit was done, but did not offer more information about the findings or where the information could be found regarding the same. Sister Sophia Redempta also never responded to our follow-up queries about the complaints raised against her.
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TOMORROW (Part Two): Divine evil : Nakuru’s mission hospital’s trail of fraud and death
