The Mwingi District Hospital's overstretched maternity ward will be expanded to accommodate at least 30 patients, the hospital's administrator Dickson Mutua has said.

"The renovation programme will help reduce congestion as the maternity ward is currently too small and can only hold 25 patients at a time. We want to expand it to a capacity of 30 people," Mutua said.

He said the project, which will give the hospital a new facelift, will be funded by APHIA plus, an NGO. Mutua said the maternity ward is in bad state.

"As the work gets underway, the patients have been temporally relocated to a different ward that is normally used for training and medical campaigns programmes. The temporary ward can only accommodate 16 patients at a go," Mutua said.

He said the hospital has received two additional incubators from the Kenya Medical Supplies Agency to help sustain children born prematurely. The hospital now has four incubators.