Kenya is located in the East coast of Africa. It has a population of about 46 million people, 40% of whom live below the poverty line. There are about 15 million children in Kenya under the age of fifteen. The Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital (MTRH) serves the Western part of Kenya with a catchment population of about 20 million. It is an academic and a tertiary care referral hospital, which diagnoses 100-110 children with cancer per year.

The government provides funding to the hospital though it is not enough to pay for all the costs incurred and a majority of the patients use out-of-pocket costs to pay for their medical expenses. Only 20% of the pediatric oncology patients have health insurance provided by the government owned national health insurance fund which enables them to cater for most of their inpatient hospital costs.