Families mourn newborn losses as healthcare crisis cripples Kiambu services

Thika Level Five Hospital, Kiambu County. [File, Standard] More than a month after leaving Thika Level V Hospital, Hellen Wanja is still in disbelief as she struggle to come to terms with the loss of her new born baby at the facility, which she attributed the doctors' strike in Kiambu County. Words heavy and her voice trembling, Wanja desperately narrates how she lost her third born in a place she had hoped would help rescue her child's life. The pain of losing her new born appeared fresh in her mind when she spoke to The Standard on Thursday, a month after her baby passed on. She said her preterm child was doing well for about three months not until the strike intensified, leaving the newborns exposed as only interns and nurses were available to attend to them. "Management was ineffective since doctors were not there. There were only nurses and intern doctors who slugged while assessing the progress of the new born," she told The Standard. According to her, the condition of her new born had improved before her death on August 30, and believes that her child could have survived were it not for the strike as the specialised cases went undetected. "My child was doing well. She was breastfeeding well. If there were doctors, they could have recognised the problem early enough and," she lamented, a situation that has left her emotionally damaged. "I lost everything," she regretted, sobbing, her frail voice muffled with grief. "I lost my kid. I lost my job during the three months I was in hospital. I wish I ad her alive. Even friends abandoned me." Doctors working in Kiambu County have been on the streets for the last four months, paralysing healthcare in the devolved unit even as deafening silence from the county leadership continue to grow. During the period which Wanja was nursing her new born, she said several children passed on at the facility including Stephen Thairu's three-days old new born. He said he rushed his spouse to the facility three weeks ago when she began developing complications about three months before the delivery time. "My wife began started bleeding and I took her to Thika level 5. She stayed for two days before a medic prescribed caesarean for her," he painfully narrated, "The doctor advised that the situation had worsened and that they either save the mother or the child and that the unborn child had 50/50 chances of survival," he added. "Three hours after the operation, the child died." More baffling, unfortunately, he explained, "I never saw the doctor again to explain to me what went wrong. My was later attended to by interns," "I feel sad. I didn't have a choice," Thairu decried, appearing frustrated and in despair. Tens of families have been thrown into grief after losing their new born since the start of doctors' strike in Kiambu County, data shows. In the period between May and September, the county recorded 15 deaths of new born babies in Thika Level 5 (66) and Kiambu Level 5 (86) hospitals alone, with the later documenting the highest number (34) in September. "The county recorded five maternal deaths in Thika, while Kiambu, Kihara and Ruiru had single deaths each since May, this year," the Kenya Medical Pharmacists Practitioners and Dentists Union (KMPDU) Central branch chairman, Dr. James Githinji told The Standard. This is despite Kiambu county leadership reporting that they had zero maternal deaths in May. The alarming healthcare situation in Kiambu has drawn the attention of healthcare workers across the county, with the unions threatening to join the demonstrations beginning next week. Even as new borns are reported to die at birth, health scheme, Social Health Authority (SHA), is reportedly not providing full care forcing a number of women to deliver at home, whereas some are allegedly detained in hospitals for failing to clear medical bills as they are not able to offset maternal fees. In the case of Thairu and Wanja, it emerged that SHA did not fully cover the medical expenses for most of mothers seeking services. "The hospital sent me to buy medicine at private chemists, drugs which I thought were covered by SHA," lamented Thairu, 49. In the recent, lobby groups have been forced to visit hospitals linked to the allegations, forcing for their release. According to statistics by the Ministry of Health, Kenya loses 21 women at birth and at least 92 new borns every single day.

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