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Joseph Gitau has been admitted to Kiambu Level Five Hospital for the last two months with a broken leg. In pain, he is still waiting to undergo surgery even after paying the requisite Sh25,000.
He shares a tiny bed at the hospital with Michel Munga from Kwambira in Limuru.
“We have got used to the situation here. There is usually no enough food for us and we always rely on relatives to bring us more food. The situation here is pathetic,” says the boda boda operator from Mathare.
It is even more pathetic at the hospital’s maternity ward, where as many as three mothers are sharing a bed with their newborns. They sleep in turns.
Elizabeth Wanjiru from Ruiru, whose child was admitted to hospital, said mothers are the biggest casualties of the congestion. “Mothers spend the whole nights here standing since there are no beds for them. The beds are normally shared by the babies where three or four of them share a bed. The county should expand the hospital to deal with this congestion,” said Wanjiru.
A doctor at Kiambu hospital who spoke to The Sunday Standard in confidence for fear of being victimised, said all was not well at the health facility.
“Things are bad here. There is too much congestion in the wards. Patients are mostly required to buy drugs outside the hospital. At times we, as medics, sympathise with patients but there is nothing we can do,” he said.
And patients at Tigoni Level Four Hospital have been up in arms, claiming they were being asked to turn up with blankets as a condition of being admitted. At a Lari hospital, reports indicated that patients are only given porridge as the facility cannot afford any other meal as suppliers are said to be on a go-slow due to non-payment.
Water shortage
Late last year, both Thika and Gatundu Level Five hospitals were faced with acute water shortage for one week.
Nyathuna Member of County Assembly (MCA) Eddy Kinyanjui, who is also the assembly’s Health Committee chairman, acknowledged the hospitals were facing food and drug shortage. He said suppliers were owed over Sh100 million by the county government.
As the hospitals face food and medicine shortage, the county has been on the spot for spending Sh2 million daily to pay Sh5,000 for recovering alcohol addicts. The county has also in recent months spent millions of shillings to finance retreats and benchmarking tours for executive members and MCAs.
Alarmed by the media reports on the status of health service in the county, Health Cabinet Secretary Sicily Kariuki dispatched senior ministry officials on a fact-finding mission.
Kiambu Health Executive Dr Joseph Murega denied that county hospitals were facing medicine and food shortage crisis but acknowledged that the health facilities were overcrowded.
Dr Andrew Toro, the county health chief officer, blamed the congestion being experienced at Kiambu, Thika and Gatundu Level Five hospitals to influx of patients from neighbouring Nairobi, Murang’a, Nakuru and Machakos counties.
Governor Ferdinand Waititu on Tuesday said there was nothing his administration could do at the moment to ease congestion at Kiambu hospital.
He said about of 50 per cent of 1,000 patients that are normally treated at the hospital daily were from Nairobi County.
“It only means that patients receive good quality services at the hospital. That is why they keep on coming here and we cannot turn them away,” said Waititu.
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