Kisii Eye Hospital (KEH)
Kisii Eye Hospital (KEH) is an inclusive business that offers high quality, affordable and accessible comprehensive eye care services to the community in the southwestern region of Kenya and beyond. The business serves low-income clientele in rural and peri-urban communities in the counties of Kisii, Nyamira, Migori, Kisumu, Kericho, Homabay, and Narok. The hospital renders services that are combating preventable blinds among low income earners, elderly men and women.
The hospital uses a commercial model to solve a social problem: avoidable blindness and visual impairment. It creates positive social impact through the restoration of sight and prevention of avoidable blindness. Preventing blindness, averts the social burden that results from dependence, cost of affected people’s redundancy and caregivers lost time, loss of economic opportunities, and social and psychological challenges. The hospital deploys qualified medical skills to offer high quality affordable eye care to three-tiered customer segments with the majority of beneficiaries in the low income segment. KEH uses the revenue from the better paying mid-to-upper income clientele to subsidize the costs to serve the low-income earners.
Before Covid-19 outbreak the business had an annual reach of 31,914 people in 2019 - over 80% of them in the low income segment. KEH has identified a region that is under served and used the expertise of the co-founder to attract and incentivize experts (ophthalmologist, optometrist, and opticians) to a region that has limited skill to render eye-care services which are considered a low priority and requires heavy investment. About 60 % of the patients served are women, 40% elderly people - especially those affected by cataract who are going blind due to age. KEH was the first private fully fledged eye hospital in Kenya.