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Mystery surrounds the sudden death of a child at a city hospital after he was embalmed without the knowledge of the family.
Medical authorities and police are investigating the circumstances surrounding the death of Edgar Keith Obiero and the secretive autopsy reportedly carried out at Kenyatta University Funeral Home.
Edgar, a 14-month old baby, had undergone a minor but successful surgery to correct a syndactyly condition at Komarock Modern Healthcare in Utawala, where he was born last year.
Syndactyly is a condition in which some, or all the fingers or toes are wholly or partly united, either naturally or as a malformation.
Edgar’s parents, Samuel and Feridah Obiero, noticed that their son’s ring and little fingers on the right hand were webbed.
Since Edgar was only three months old, doctors advised against surgery, proposing it be conducted once he turned one year and above - which fell on August 6, 2018.
He was screened and admitted after a nurse ruled the minor was in good health and surgery scheduled for the following day. The surgery was successful, but a nurse reportedly declined to discharge the baby, requesting more time to monitor him.
“Mother and son were happy. It was as if Edgar had not been operated on. He was all over the place jumping up and down,” says a distraught Samuel, recalling the last moments with his second-born child.
Samuel returned to the hospital on August 8 following a distress call from the wife. Edgar lay flat, dead on the theatre bed, where medics frantically tried resuscitate him. He collapsed and died minutes after a nurse administered an injection.
The family believes the sudden death was either triggered by a wrong drug prescription or the female nurse applied an incorrect administering procedure.
“The nurses were just fooling me, when they knew very well my son was dead. It was painful seeing the lifeless body of Edgar,” says a bitter Samuel.
The hospital’s CEO Dr SK Nyamu, a gynaecologist, said the unfortunate incident is being investigated by the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Board (KMPDB) and the Nursing Council of Kenya (NCK) who “were here and I gave them all the necessary information, including a medical file and report,” said Dr Nyamu.
But Samuel has many unanswered questions, and wonders why the hospital and funeral home were so quick to embalm the body. “Why would someone be so keen to embalm the body without our consent?” he posed.
Embalming can only be done after the family or next of kin consents to the procedure that involves injection of chemical solutions into the arteries, tissues and organs, and draining of fluids to slow decomposition.
When a cause of death is in doubt, the standard practice is to embalm after a postmortem is carried out.
In Edgar’s case, the reverse happened and the family is seeking answers from the hospital, police and medical bodies.
Nyamu said it was a mistake to embalm the body. “I am a God-fearing person who cannot allow something like that to happen. It was wrong for the funeral home to embalm the body when a postmortem was pending.”
Edgar had been injected by one of the nurses on a routine check-up after the doctor had examined the boy about 45 minutes earlier.
The mother is convinced the injection was wrong. A different nurse allegedly let slip that the medication was supposed to be administered orally.
“The nurse asked me how the medication was administered. I told her he had been injected. She sounded shocked saying, ‘It was supposed to be oral’ before walking out in a huff,” recounted Feridah, fighting back tears.
A standoff ensued between the hospital’s staff and the boy’s relatives before officers from Ruai Police Station arrived.
Samuel recorded a statement under OB number 27/8/8/2018 then moved the body to the morgue, along Thika Superhighway.
The autopsy, which had been scheduled for August 10 did not proceed after the embalming. Government pathologist Dr Johansen Odour pulled out of the exercise in protest at the way the body had been tampered with yet it was clearly marked ‘post-mortem case’.
Staff at the funeral home claimed there was a mix-up of tags, hence the confusion.
A subsequent postmortem carried out on August 11 did not ascertain the cause of death. Pathologists Dr Peter Ndegwa for the government, Dr Fredrick Okinyi (family) and Dr John Mathaiya (hospital) recommended a toxicology test at the Government Chemist.
The funeral home’s secretary Esther Mukuhi admitted that an error had been done and that a probe has been launched.
Some of the morticians claim they were authorised to cancel the post-mortem. However, they were unable to reveal the exact person who gave instructions.
Mukuhi explained that, “We are yet to establish whether there was collusion. But we apologise and have put in place measures to ensure the error does to occur again.”
