Did Mater Hospital ‘sell’ baby or is distraught mother in denial?

 Alice Kasuva

At 32 weeks and 3 days, Alice Kasuva's baby had to be born through an emergency Caeserian Section. The doctor who was handling Alice advised her and her husband, Peter Muriuki, that unless the procedure was done they would lose their baby.

"A week before I had noticed that some water was leaking. I told my husband and we went to Mater Hospital. The doctors tried to contain it but the liquid never stopped coming out. That is when they decided that they have to take me for an emergency CS," says Alice.

Both Mater and Alice say the procedure was performed under general anaesthesia. When she regained consciousness, the first thing Alice says she asked for was her baby. "One of the medical students, part of the team that operated, asked if I wanted to breastfeed my baby. My answer was an instant 'yes'," recalls Alice.

A minute passed and her baby hadn't been availed to her yet. Five minutes. Ten minutes. One hour. Four hours. All through she kept prodding and asking if someone was bringing her baby. She however felt weird when she was moved to an isolated ward, Ward 79, to be by herself. Personnel would come in to treat her but none dared talk about her baby, however much she kept asking.

"Everyone who came in would tell me, 'there is somebody else in charge of the baby,'" she says. Alice was never presented with a baby between lunch time (around noon) and evening (about 6pm). "It is only after my husband came and insisted that the baby be produced that the authorities seemed obliged to do something," Alice says. According to the couple, two hospital officials (possibly doctors), a male and a female, arrived at the ward and asked for privacy with parents of the baby alone. Relatives who had tagged along with Muriuki moved out of the ward. Instead of being presented with a baby, Alice and Muriuki were told that their baby, though born alive, couldn't make it. A body, wrapped in green linen, was brought to the couple in a box. The body that was wrapped in it, Alice says, was "so cold and dark" like it had been in a fridge for days.

“Immediately, my instincts told me that the baby was not mine. His skin tone and his looks did not resemble me or my husband, plus, he was severely deformed. The fingers on the left hand were webbed. The right hand had only three fingers – the middle two were missing. He had no testes and his face was malformed. I wondered why such extensive deformities were not captured in the scans prior to the surgery,” Alice says.

But Dr Victor Nganyi of Mater Hospital says Alice’s account is largely false because there is ‘not a chance’ that a nurse or intern working singularly or in cahoots, may have ‘changed’ her baby.

“We are sure that the baby belongs to the couple. The systems are too tight to allow anything of the sort. We have pushed for DNA testing to be done in South Africa so that we can put this matter to rest,” said Dr Nganyi.

According to Muriuki, the couple was asked to sign body disposal forms; failure to which the couple would be ‘forced’ to take the body home with them. But they refused and demanded for a DNA test.

When contacted, Mater Hospital Marketing Manager Muli Boniface denied accusations that hospital personnel switched the couple’s new born with a dead body.

“If anything, we have been very kind and nice to the couple. The lady was being treated at Mater for free, under a project dubbed Mater Comprehensive Care Clinic (MCCC) meant for needy residents of informal settlement at the Mukuru slums,” Muli said, adding that, “Since their claim, we have sought for DNA testing but they (Alice and Muriuki) have always found an excuse as to why they can’t agree to the test now.”

Muli told The Nairobian that Mater even extended goodwill to Alice by intervening when she was reportedly detained at Machakos Level 5 Hospital over an outstanding medical bill.

“She couldn’t pay her bill of roughly Sh23,000 and called us from the hospital. Through our social services department, her fee was waived and she was subsequently released,” says Muli.

But Alice denies ever calling Mater Hospital asking for help or being admitted at Machakos Level 5 Hospital.

“It is the hospital that called me to find out where I was. Earlier, they had written a recommendation letter for me after I developed complications from the CS. I lied to them that I was at Machakos Level 5 Hospital.  I was being treated at Huruma Nursing Home. I lied because I was afraid that they would track me down and harm me.

“If Mater are saying that they intervened on my case while I was at Machakos Level 5, then they are lying. I was never there,” Alice  told this writer.

Documents in our possession indicate that Alice was treated at Huruma Nursing Home and not Machakos Level 5 Hospital.

Muriuki refutes the hospital’s claims that they have been uncooperative in having DNA tests done.

“All we want is credibility. Mater has offered to pay for the cost of testing. We, however, don’t trust their doctors. Then again, doctors may collude to watch each other’s backs. We need an independent team to determine the truth. If the baby is truly ours, we will accept and take the body,” Muriuki says.

But according to Dr Nganyi, the couple is simply in denial. “The parents say that the ultrasound showed that their baby was normal. However, there are details that cannot be captured by ultrasound; like the deformities that the baby had. A baby who is born prematurely has a low chance of survival. Premature babies also tend to have deformities. The couple are in denial and don’t want to accept the state of their son’s birth,” Nganyi said.

The Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Board is investigating the case.