NAIROBI, KENYA – Alice Mwongera, 42, a mother of two, lost her husband two years ago at a public hospital in Nairobi, the capital. The memories of that tragic day still haunt her.
Her husband, Moses Mwongera, was suffering from kidney failure, so she rushed him to receive dialysis at the emergency unit of Kenyatta National Hospital, KNH, the biggest referral institution in the country.
"Medicine has become a tool of trade, instead of a calling."
Mwongera says that although they were a middle-class couple, their health insurance had run out because of her husband’s prolonged illness, forcing them to seek treatment at the public facility.
When they got to the emergency room, they found the place crowded, as it usually is. Mwongera says she pushed through the crowd to get a mobile bed. After 15 minutes, which she says felt like hours, she got one and wheeled her husband to the waiting room.
“I stood patiently on my husband’s bedside waiting for someone to at least examine him,” she says. “But six hours later, he was yet to be attended to. I tried to grab every medical personnel that came our way, but they all passed hurriedly.”
She says they finally snagged a doctor, but it was too late.
“When my husband’s condition got worse, that is when we got the attention of a doctor,” she says, tears welling in her eyes. “He tried to resuscitate him, but it was too late.”
She says the grief was overwhelming, but she was able to bear the situation and start life as a widow. But six months later, she says another tragedy struck because of medical negligence and, once again, changed her life forever.
Her younger brother, Morris Njoroge, 27, whom she was living with, caught a cold. After two days, he developed breathing difficulties and was admitted to Nairobi’s Metropolitan Hospital, a private health facility.
But his condition continued to worsen, and the hospital advised the family to move him to a facility with an intensive care unit, ICU. Mwongera says she hailed an ambulance and, minutes later, she and her brother were back at the KNH emergency unit, where her husband had died half a year earlier.
“By that time, my brother was gasping for breath,” she says. “It was around 9 p.m. Fearing that my brother’s case could end up like my husband’s, I tried frantically to get him admitted.”
But she says the hospital denied her brother’s admission to the ICU.
“Despite having documents from the Metropolitan Hospital stating that my brother needed to be admitted at the ICU, a doctor insisted that he gets a CT scan, then vanished,” she says. “We queued for the procedure, and, as soon as the CT scan was done, I started a hunt for the doctor.”
It was not until 5 a.m. the next day that she found him. By this time, her brother had passed out.
“The doctor asked me to go look for a bed at the ICU myself,” she says. “I tried all I could and got a bed at 4 p.m. – almost 12 hours later.”
Ten days later, her brother was still in a coma. She says each time her family asked questions regarding her brother’s sickness, the doctors turned hostile.
“They took it as a personal affront,” she says. “I complained severely to the hospital’s CEO, but he told me to let the doctors do their work.”
One day, she visited the hospital and found that her brother had been moved to the general ward. He was still in a coma. Mwongera rushed back to the chief executive officer, but she says she didn’t get any help.
She says her youthful and strong brother, a local basketball star, wasted away unattended until he was reduced to skin and bone. He died 20 days later.
