Fyona Wanjiku appeal: Family seeks help for girl’s kidney transplant after three failed attempts

21-year-old Fyona Wanjiku Kabitta has spent most of her life in hospital beds, operating theatres, and enduring a level of pain many adults will never know.

Fyona was stranded in India with her father for nearly four years, her situation worsening after the scrapping of the Eduafya cover under NHIF.

They have now been forced to return home, still sick, still waiting and in urgent need of a third kidney transplant that requires almost Ksh. 8 million. Her dad has asked for financial help through his Mpesa number 0716 727012 or through PAYBILL NO.222111. Account NO. 1913797.

At just seven years old, in 2011, Fyona Wanjiku Kabitta became one of the youngest kidney transplant recipients, receiving a kidney from her father, Walter Kabitta.

“For a few years, Fyona lived what many would call a normal childhood. But in 2018, that transplanted kidney failed, forcing her back into the hospital and another emergency surgery. A relative stepped forward, giving Fyona a second chance at life. But fate had other plans. The second kidney would last for only two years,” Kabitta told Citizen TV. 

In 2022, her second kidney could not be saved; it was removed in June, and since then, she hasn’t seen a drop of urine. It has beenone situation after another, and the side effects are too many.

Fyona and her father have been in India from 2022 until their return on December 1st, 2025. Three years and eight months of struggle, pain, and uncertainty in a foreign land.

“From March 2022 to December 2022, everything was under Edu Afya, but come 2023, there was an announcement that Edu Afya was being collapsed to UHC, and we started,” Kabitta says. 

Fyona, who lost her mother in 2019, would go on to be stranded in India with her father for nearly four years.

“Coming to dialysis and monthly cost in India without the help of government, just friends and family, diaspora, and my church, it has been 150k every month and sometimes 200k per month when there are infections,” her father shares. 

“India is not home na kile iniumiza sana, is I was not able to see my brother, and my mum was in my mind a lot, pia I could see my dad hivi nasema amesacrifice a lot,” Fyona says. 

The brother that Fyona and her father left behind in class eight is now in form four. But the hardest truth remains, Fyona is not healed. They were forced to return, not because of recovery, but by financial constraints.

“For these chronic illnesses, surely the government of Kenya let the girl be treated because it is beyond now, even when I was coming to doctors in India were asking where are you going,” says her father. 

“Now I am in Kenya…Kenyan government, please notice us. President William Ruto, we are pleading,” an emotional Fyona said on Citizen TV. 

“My sister ameteseka sana sana, I was here when she used to collapse, I go to the hospital with her mpaka najiuliza ni nini tulifanya,” says Eldon Kabitta, Fyona’s brother.

Under the Social Health Authority, a 21-year-old can no longer benefit from a parent’s medical cover. Fyona turned 18 while still in India, leaving her without coverage. 

It is only now that her father is helping her secure a national ID, a process that will take time. 

But another hurdle lies in the revised overseas treatment policy under SHA, which currently supports only paediatric kidney transplants and is yet to be actualized, leaving many patients like Fyona stranded.

After the death of their mother, Walter abandoned his logistics job to care for his daughter, but raising over Ksh.8 million is far beyond his imagination. Fyona dropped out of school in form two, but her dream is still alive.