|
|
Kenya: Nyanza Hospital in a Pathetic State
 |
 |
|||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
|
||||||||||
The East African Standard (Nairobi)
28 March 2008
Posted to the web 28 March 2008
Jonah Onyango
Nairobi
The Nyanza Provincial Hospital is in a deplorable condition.
The hospital is grappling with myriad problems, including an acute accommodation and water crisis that has compromised sanitation and threatened to halt vital operations.
Mothers and their children in a ward at the Nyanza Provincial General Hospital. Presently, three to five children share a bed. Picture by Jonah Obonyo
Children aged under five are crowded in an old ward after being evacuated from another, whose ceiling caved in last week.
The ward, which has a capacity to accommodate 40 patients, has consequently been overstretched to hold more than 150 children and their parents, who fear that their children might develop new infections as a result of the congestion.
The crisis follows a cholera outbreak in the province, which has killed more than 30 people and left 400 others sick in the past two months.
On Thursday, The Standard witnessed the appalling state of the hospital. Up to five children were sharing a single bed as their parents slept on the floor, some under the beds.
Ms Nelly Atieno, who has been at the hospital with a sick child for more than a week, said she had developed a cold and backache for sleeping on the floor.
She is also afraid that her two-year-old son, who is feeling much better, would contract a communicable disease following the exposure to other children suffering from different ailments.
"We are forced to squeeze under the small beds even without sheets to cover ourselves. As a result I have developed a serious backache and flu and I fear my child might get re-infected," she said.
The hospital's Medical Superintendent, Dr Juliana Otieno, blamed the crisis on the collapse of the ceiling in one of the wards, which was constructed only two years ago.
Otieno said the now deserted ward was more spacious and could comfortably accommodate about 80 beds, slightly more than the 67 it was designed for. The hospital's predicament is further worsened by a persistent water shortage.
"Most of the time there is no water to wash our children's soiled bedding. The situation is bad," said Ms Judith Aoko, a parent.
|
Otieno said she had raised the matter with the Kisumu Water and Sewerage Company (Kiwasco). Senior Kiwasco officials visited the hospital on Wednesday to assess the situation.
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Copyright © 2008 The East African Standard. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Make allAfrica.com your home page | RSS Feed | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Top | Site Guide | Who We Are | Advertising | Search | Subscribe | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Questions or Comments? Contact us. Read our Privacy Statement. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
