Ministry should act on negligence in hospitals

Circumstances leading to the death of baby Joseph Ngugi in Kiambu County read like a thriller, except that they are, sadly, real. From life to death, back to life and finally death, it seems like an element of negligence by medics put the final nail in the infant’s coffin.

Accounts by the infant’s parents are that when the baby fell sick, he was first taken to Ngewa Health Centre from where he was referred to Kiambu Level 5 Hospital. Two weeks earlier, the boy’s twin sister is said to have died at the Kiambu Level 5 Hospital under unclear circumstances.

But while the baby’s parents hoped doctors would treat the little boy, it was not to be when the doctors declared him dead. For medics to have made that declaration, they must have conducted thorough tests to confirm the death, yet surprisingly, the infant cried out shortly before he was to be buried. The fact that the mortician found an oxygen mask still attached to the baby, perhaps hours after he had been declared dead points to the cavalier attitude of doctors and nurses who attended to him.

Clearly, at the time of his death’s declaration, the infant was not dead, yet from that moment through the preparations for his burial, he stayed abandoned, cold and hungry. Were it not for that, he could be alive today.

Though negligence has not been established here, cases of negligence in public hospitals are on the rise, causing a lot of concern among Kenyans. This must be nipped in the bud to restore public faith in government-run hospitals.