The Price of a Breath in Lunga Lunga Hospital Used to Be KES 1.5 Million a Month. Amref and Global Fund Are Making It Free.

May 2026, Kwale County, Kenya. On the southernmost edge of coastal Kenya, the tarmac frays into gravel, and the gravel gives up. There, Tanzania beckons with no border post worth noticing, just the same weather, the same baobabs, the same whispered Kiswahili crossing a line that only maps and governments bother to draw. This is Lunga Lunga, a place so remote that even Kwale County calls it hard to reach. Within this border town the hospital is also a last resort for a farmer’s wife in labour, a fisherman’s child with an unbreaking fever, where accident victims from both sides of the border arrive and nobody checks a passport when a life is tipping over. In that emergency, as Lunga Lunga Hospital’s medical superintendent Dr. Hamisi realises the cylinder is running low, each of these patients need the same thing, and it is not his expertise.They all need oxygen. Just air, pushed into lungs too tired to fight alone. Until two months ago, in this forgotten corner of the coast, that simplest of things was the hardest to find.

Until recently, Dr. Hamisi and his team had to purchase that oxygen, cylinder by cylinder, at a cost of roughly KES 1.5 million every single month. For a county that was marginalized before devolution and is still fighting to hire enough nurses and doctors, that figure is a test of survival.

In February 2026, that changed. Amref Health Africa’s team led by Dr. George Githuka, with support from the Global Fund, commissioned a Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) oxygen generating plant at Lunga Lunga Hospital, the culmination of years of planning, infrastructure building, and partnership. The plant produces oxygen for the hospital and refills cylinders for surrounding facilities, extending its reach deep into one of Kenya’s most underserved regions.

Getting here was not simple. Before the plant could run, the facility needed a new generator and a generator house to keep it operational during power outages. It needed a transformer upgrade, installed in collaboration with Kenya Power, so the plant would not destabilise the hospital’s electricity supply. Only then could the PSA unit, supplied and installed by BOC, begin producing oxygen at the bedside, in the theatres, and across the wards.

“Every facility we grow requires oxygen. It is the lifeline of all units within each hospital.”

— H.E. Fatuma Achani, Governor, Kwale County

The investment at Lunga Lunga is part of the largest oxygen infrastructure expansion in Kenya since independence. Amref and the Global Fund have targeted counties where the regular supply of liquid oxygen is simply not possible: Kwale, where Lunga lunga hospital is situated, Lamu, Tana River, Mandera, Garissa, and Turkana. In each place, the logic is the same. Oxygen is the prerequisite for everything else a health system tries to do.

During a recent field visit, a Global Fund delegation led by Linden Morrison, Head of the High Impact Africa II Department, travelled to Lunga Lunga alongside Fund Portfolio Manager Paul McCarrick and Clare Rono from Price Waterhouse Coopers, the Local Funding Agent. What they found was a hospital already transformed, and a medical superintendent, Dr. Hamisi Hamisi, still at the maternity ward, moving patient to patient, doing the quiet work that infrastructure now consistently supports.

Amref’s Dr. George Githuka is clear-eyed about what comes next. The plant carries a two-year warranty from the point of installation, and Amref is already working with the county on preventive maintenance, staff training, and a transition plan that will keep the system running long after the warranty expires. This sustainability move is built into the PSA plant design to ensure ownership by the entire county. The Global Fund is an international financing institution that raises and invests over US$4 billion annually to fight HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria, while strengthening health systems. This oxygen initiative is supported through the Global Fund’s grant to Amref Health Africa.

Written by Faith Kathambi Mutegi, Knowledge Management Officer, Amref Health Africa.

Edited by: Paulette Adhiambo, Communications Associate, Amref Health Africa