Gaitu: the Delegation’s first health apostolate opens its doors
On 5 July 2025, at St. Luigi Orione Parish in Gaitu, Diocese of Meru, the Orione Mission Afya Care Centre was opened — the first health apostolate of the Sons of Divine Providence in Kenya.
It is a dispensary, not a hospital, and the community says so plainly. What it offers is what a rural parish territory most often needs and most rarely has within reach: general consultation, minor surgery, maternal and child health, antenatal and postnatal care. A clinical officer, a nurse and support staff run the centre. A laboratory is planned.
A parish that was already young
Gaitu is itself a recent story. The mission was entrusted to the Orionines in 2019; the church was consecrated and the parish officially opened on 12 June 2022 by Bishop Salesius Mugambi — the first parish in Kenya under the patronage of St. Luigi Orione. It was born from the mother churches of Nkabune and Chaaria, and it is served by a community of four religious: three priests and one brother. The first parish priest was Fr. Maurice Mawira.
Three years after the church was consecrated, the dispensary opened beside it. The sequence says something about the charism.
“They do not care only for the spirit but also for the body: they are missionaries through and through.”
— a parishioner of Gaitu
Why health, and why now
The Congregation has run schools, training centres, farms and rehabilitation programmes in Kenya since 1996, but never until now a health facility of its own. Meru is a place where distance is a diagnosis: a mother who has to travel far for antenatal care often simply does not go.
Afya is the Swahili word for health. The name of the centre is a promise made in the language of the people who will use it.
Visit St. Luigi Orione Parish, Gaitu
← Back to news