Leaders can’t be in charge of sectors they have no faith in

What is the worth of the life of a Kenyan citizen? The question lingers on with you, long after you have visited the Level Five Referral Hospital that is the former Provincial General Hospital in Kakamega. For, I have recently accompanied a friend to the eye-opener that is the one stop shop for healthcare in the former Western Province, to visit his ailing mother. Put simply, the place is pathetic – perhaps worse than pathetic. It is a slap in the face of the health component of President Uhuru Kenyatta’s Big Four Agenda. It is a mockery to healthcare generally.

The external edifice is impressive. The tight fence opens into a compound with whitewashed walls and neat lawns. The external beauty belies what awaits you in the buildings. We presently walk into the ward. It is a messy beehive of activity. The place is overflowing with humankind. The sick are pasted in distressing rickety beds with scanty linen. Cloistering them are the rest of us. Coloured water passing for white tea is served in dilapidated plastic. There is something near a desperate scramble for this liquid.