No usual bustle as Kenya Defence Forces doctors take over Kenyatta National Hospital

With healthcare on its knees, the Kenyatta National Hospital - the biggest referral health facility in East Africa - has lost the hustle and bustle that characterises it. On Friday, doctors from the Kenya Defence Forces took over emergency services at the hospital.

When The Standard on Sunday visited the hospital, the usually crowded facility was rather desolate even as military doctors took care of new patients. A tout who suffered an injury after a matatu that was reversing ran over his leg could be seen writhing in pain along one of the corridors.

With the heavily bandaged leg, he was soon attended to. Inside the consultation room a three-year-old had just had his wounds dressed after he was scalded the previous evening. 

We could not be allowed to go beyond the casualty section but learnt that a woman had just given birth along the corridors. Other visitors to the hospital told us that a doctor who was just passing by had mercy on her and helped her deliver before she was whisked to the maternity wards.

As we hang around, an ambulance drove into the parking bay and a woman in labour was quickly taken to the consultation room where she was seen by a military doctor. In another case, an unconscious man was brought in on a motorbike and quickly wheeled in for treatment.

Three more people were lying on stretchers waiting to be attended to. The corridors were empty and windy, something a visitor would not feel when health functions operated normally.

The deployment of the military doctors came after 290 consultant doctors from the University of Nairobi withdrew their services from the hospital. Dr Major Vincent Mtongwe and Dr Major Edward Nandi are some of the doctors attending to patients.