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Hospital where woman delivered on reception area under fire

By Amina Wako April 22nd, 2019 2 min read

The government has begun investigations into a case of negligence at Shalom Hospital in Athi River, Machakos county where a woman was left to give birth at the facility’s reception area as nurses watched and enjoyed their tea.

Machakos Governor Alfred Mutua, through his Twitter handle, has said that health officials from the Machakos County Government and officials from the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Board have been dispatched to the facility to seek more details of the circumstances surrounding the incident.

This after a video emerged on social media over the Easter weekend of a woman giving birth at the hospital reception area.

The video was recorded by a man who had taken his wife to the hospital. According to the man, a woman in labour was brought into the hospital on a wheelchair and three nurses who were at the facility were notified that it was an emergency case.

“So as I was seated waiting for my wife to be attended to, an older woman is rushed in on a wheelchair, there are three nurses on the table taking tea, they seem not to bother about the woman despite being notified it’s an emergency case, so the woman pleads with one of them ‘haki nisaidie’ one of the nurses told her to get up and walk,” he narrated.

UNMOVED NURSES

The woman, who was visibly in pain, was unable to walk and so the man helped her up.

“I helped her up with no aid from a nurse, we made about three-four steps mama akashout ‘mtoto anaanguka’ then boom! Mtoto akaanguka kwa floor!” he explained.

It’s at this moment that one of the nurses rushed and picked the child from the floor, as another moved to attend to the woman.

On the day the video made rounds on social media, Governor Mutua promised to follow up on the incident by sending his officers and Medical Board to investigate the incident.