COMPLAINS ABOUT NAIROBI WOMEN'S HOSPITAL

I am writing this as of 27th June 2012 and some of the stories date as far 2005 to as early as June 2012. Having distibuted part one of the horrendous happenings in Nairobi Women's Hospital, I take this opportunity to apologise to my sister and her husband for having opened what is considered as a pandoras box in this case the memories of what would have been. Sometimes it's good to put God's wills aside and be realistic just for once, because I don't think that his will is for people to loose their lives out of negligence. I am writing this hoping my sister and all the other people who have lost their loved ones find closure in knowing that no any other person who shall come across all these stories can still afford to put their lives at risk by visiting any of Nairobi Women's Hospital branches. I don't intend to hold any meeting with the C.E.O of the hospital neither do I need his email nor telephone number with an assurance that « Dear Suzanne,thank you for the feedback we will analyse the pages and address each concern individually ». What good is their analysis going to do to the lost lives, bring them back from their death-beds ? Clearly, the answer is NO as death, we all know is an irreversible act.

The hospital has deprived my daughter of her nieces, the parents of their daughters, her sister of her sisters, my siblings of their nieces, my nieces and nephews of their cousins, my grandparents of the grandchildren etcetra! Usually it's not just one person who suffers when death strikes. When it strikes under normal circumstances, we mourn and let it slide, but when it strikes out of negligence, then we don't forget very easily.

I am taking my time out to write this so as as to create awareness hence, any person who shall come across this article and still decide to attend the said hospitals, they will be doing so at their own risk. 

So, the hospital volunteered to dispose off the bodies so as to save the parents the turmoil of mourning and face burial expenses at the same time. How sure are we that they decide to extend this « gesture » so that no further examination might be carried out on the corpse to determine the cause of death ? This particular scenario played in my head after another lady wrote and told me that the hospital volunteered to dispose off the body of her dead baby, as you will read below.

Part two is a long read because it comprises of stories as told by the women, and in between I also have bits and pieces that I have collected from the forums on facebook as well.

This one was posted on Monday, 25th June 2012

1.      No matter how painful it is, I think i should gather guts and say what cut,ok i used to go for ante natals at Aga khan and wanted to deliver at Nairobi Women's Hospital since it was next to home. So I took all my records and broughtt them to NWH and my bp shot the last week@ 140/90 and had a urine test it was bila urine. Now the gynae who attended to me told me that my bp is alarming she wantd to induce me tht day but then she said since my EDD was on 24th May I should just come even if i hadn't laboured for inductions.

On the 24th, I went at 2pm, waited and the nurses admitted me and as  waited for her then she sends apology that shes going for a matanga. I was handled with someone different @9pm and thats when the 1st tablet was put. I was not even talked to sijui this that, I was just seeing the nurse coming to check my bp and my son's heartbeat which was btw 140-160. It fikad 6am bado another tablet ikaingiza and at around 10am my son's heartbeat went down then they dungad me somthing ndio wakapata heartbeat ya mtoi wakanikimbiza emergency for caesarean. My baby even cried after birth, it 11am then at around 7pm the mguu turns blue meaning lack of oxygen. We ask what's the problem, the doctor says that baby has a lung infectiön. We ask what was the cause ati they dnt know. My aunt insisted that it was that induction the docs wanakimya.

On 27th he had an echo scan and brain was normal, heart was, it was the lungs which had issues. On 28th my son wasn't breathng well, he is rushed to the ICU, he had a tube in the lungs with the help of a ventilator. After a few days my son has kidney failure then after 8days my son has bleeding in the brain. Imajine stomaching all this as a single mother,then we ask the ICU in charge the condition or we take him to another hosy then anajibu that even if you go to London thnigs wont change huyu mtoto alikunywa maji.

Iimagine I cried, then the other doc tells me that with the brain damage he will develop slowly. The last day my son died.

I was there, I saw evrythng. Wht i ask myself to this date's that, why didn't me that my son had fetal distress mapema ? why do they tell me after his death ? Wehn my son was being taken to the Icu it was because of the lungs and not coz of the brain. I was told that the ventilator at times damages the brain when a baby stays 4 long. RIP Clyde you could have been 1month 1day today.

2.       Last week a woman gave birth right outside thea gate in broad day light just coz she dint have admision fee on her...

3.      Worked there, a whole mertanity unity can be with two qualified nurses only and so emergencies have to wait!?

4.      I had a personal experience with those guys during the world blood donor day and you get to wonder if some of the employees are quacks?

5.      My siz delivered there last week and the babys leg was fractured, a week old baby in plaster?!!!

6.      My collegue went to their maternity in labour that lasted 26 hrs and they kept asking her to push on,then later when was almost running out of oxygen she was rushed to theatre only for hey baby to be born with a huge knife mark on his forehead,that mark is parmanet till date!thats the worst maternity hosp,i would rather Pumwani

7.      They told a friend to deposit Kshs.1 million before thy could put a baby in an incubator and imagine the mother had just died for being told to push for so many hours! The baby died 5 hrs after the mom!

8.       I gave Birth in Kenyatta Hospital and they nurses and doctors followed our pulse rates,blood pressure,dialation and checking after the baby and even feeding me,every Freaking 30 mins,at some point i thot they were too much,and i had the most peaceful delivery ever!

9.      What i hear very few people go through normal delivery the rest are discouraged by being told that they have an infection so they have to go undergo CS which is very expensive

10.  I was not in the maternity ward but I will live to tell the story. Kwanza the nurses, I think they recruit them from HELL!! You are so sick, feeling like u'l die any minute, u ring the bell, they ignore you totally and continue yapping at the desk as u watch them desparately and helplessly. They dont give a hoot whether you die or survive. I actually had to write a letter to the CEO after I left Hosi. Thank God I left alive. Wewewewewe wacha tu. HORROR!! After all that horror I had to endure the Bill of over 100k.

11.  I took a friend there and after her cs delivery, she ws given a bill of 185k. She tried in vain to find out what made it come to that much bt all in all she had to foot the bill.

12.  A few months back my baby fell ill late in the night and since Nairobi womens is the closest hospt to where i live I took him there..am telling you there was no queue bt it took us an hour or more to get attended to by very unwilling staff.i hate the hospital TOTALLY..dont even mention the huge bill we were slapped with..

13.   I saw death with my own eyes.

14.  Three years ago, I decided I will never be back to that hospital after my encounter with rude nurse. I had to drive out and try elsewhere with a sick spouse.

15.  I lost my baby in this hospital. I had been attending my clinics there ( adams arcade)until the sixth month when things went sour. I developed some abdominal pains and my boyfriend rushed me to hospital at 10pm only to find a doctor who seemed not to know what he was doing. I cant remember his name but he asked me to do a scan to find out if my baby was safe.

They did not have anyone to do that scan and referred me to their hurlingham branch, there was still no one to perform the scan. apparently they only have one person who operates in both hospitals at night and he was offduty. My boyfriend made a quick decision and took me to Nairobi Hospital where we did the scan and took my report back to the doctor at nairobi womens.

i remember vividly the doc at Nairobi hospital saying that I tell my doc to check my cervix since it could be premature labour. This doc at NWH just looked at the report and said everything was ok. He therfore prescribed antibiotics and painkillers which i beleive raptured my uterus and I started bleeding there and then. I was then taken to the delivery ward and induced and after so many hours of pain i delivered normally. My baby was put in the incubator while i was admitted after heavy bleeding that continued for days.

I was discharged 4 days later with my baby still in the incubator but a week later the bleeding that had stopped recurred. I was once again admitted in the same hospital. I had no choice of changing hospitals since my baby was there. My baby passed on exactly 2 weeks after delivery. I got the news of his demise on my hospital bed. These guys could not stop my bleeding. by the time i was leaving hospital, my HB was 5. I have struggled with headaches and pains but three months later am now ok.

16.  What does that nurse say « even if you would go london » what does she know or just the name , i dont think so. My hubbys daughter now my step daughter was born 26 weeks early and those days chances of survival then weren't as good as now, and she survived she is 18 yrs now, and the only thing they didnt fix was to freeze the eyes something in the back as she was undeveloped which as to all they were doing with the mother being of rhesus negative an ddad positive the rhesus factor thing baby had lots of check up and to be transfered to some hospital in london, these caused an early labour but at a look on this technically they had missed to save her eyes and thus made her blind for life.

They compensated on this which really doesn't matter but they owned up to their error, but the fact that she has no worry financially , house refurbished to meet her needs, audio phone , computer , walk , do everyting else for herself and everything else apart from her not seeing her life is full and her brain which had all odds but didnt become handicap she fought thru at this day and age i believe your child had a 100 % chances not even have a brain damage let alone death thats negligence and they should own up period i dont think anyone wants to go thru same odeal again not imagining the cost as well,and yes this came up in media newspapers as well as telly if NEWS INTERNATIONAL came trumbbling down with the high mighty mugal closing up, shun everything and face things head on.

17.  My experience at nwh was 5 years ago. Thought things changed. I still get shivers when I think about it. Two months later they gave my son an adult version of a pain killer and asked us to go home, thank God we decided to go Gertrudes where my sons oxygen was at 40% coz of the meds. Ended up admitted at gerties for a week. FROM THAT DAY I HAVE NOT RECOMMENDED NWH TO ANYONE FOR ANYTHING!

18.  By the way,  on the NWH site there was another lady too....her baby died at NWH cos of lack of oxygen,am not sure if she is a member of this group but i read her story there.....imagine her baby needed O2 but the nurse went for an hour to get it....and when she came back there was no apology....i guess by the time the nurse came back it was kinda too late :(

19.  I gave out my  incidence but it has hapend to me twice. Can you believe I took my baby there wid high fever, vomiting and diarrhoea and instead they gave ORS and some medicine which were not helpin. So had to take him back and they wantd to admit him and I had to pay 20k as admition fee. Lucky for me I met mum there who told me her daughter had suffered the same and they did the same thing. She tld me to take hm to Coptic coz ni pesa tu watanikula. When I took to him to Coptic my baby alidungwa sindano and withn no time alianza kucheza na kunyonya. So we are complaing because of anger that we have towards them

20.  NWH almost killed my sis in law....imagine during(n mayb after) her CS she lost alot of blood(like abnormally) n thy didnt tell any of us @ all!The 1st few hrs after delivery she was so weak n we thought,well its normal.Bt mothers catch up,right?The weakness persisted,constant headaches,dizziness,swollen feet she could hardly walk.Thank God we rem. in time tht swollen feet can be a sign of lack of blood so she went 2 Gertrudes n was told tht her blood count was 5-seriously???whereby a normal person's in around 13(I think) bt ths was so so sad n dangerous esp 4 a new mum wit all the new responsibilities,stress n nursing the CS wound.NWH never gave her any medications 2 replenish the blood,yaani walinyamazia hiyo story hivyo.Wako dwn,nkt!

21.  OMG!This is scaring me . i know they are slow and very expe . each visit wil cost 10k just some antibiotics and pain killers . . . and already i had sweared i would never deliver there . its good to trust your instincts .

22.  Mine was a fatal story.....lost my baby in 2003. They were quick to ask me to allow them to burry my dead child. I was emotional and distraught, so I agreed. I wish I dint coz maybe I would have done a post-moterm on her. Malpractice started a long time ago.....notice how they have enticing maternity packages? When the deal is too good, think twice.

23.  Since you operated Rose she has never recovered,things have been worse day by day.We,ve used money for the course but doctors are claiming operation was done badly.please can the doctor give us a way forward.

Judy, kindly send me more details on rchepkemoi@nwch.co.ke like when and          where she was operated and the doctor's name we follow up on it asap

I,m sorry Rose died on friday 10th,I had already aired the issue b4,the doctor,s         name was kasia. We,re not happy with ur services plz next time u handle patients     handle with care,coz we,re paying u 4 the services.

By the time am getting here, if at all the heart had mileage, then would have run out of it by now. I still have quite a number of stories, but I let you devor your eyes on these ones as I continue compiling the remaining part three.

Do not forget what our main aim is, to spread the news far and wide so that no any other person shall fall victim to these money minded establishments! I have received good stories from hospitals like Kenyatta as below, let's not despise such.

I gave birth in Kenyatta Hospital and they nurses and doctors followed our pulse rates, blood pressure, dilation and checking after the baby and even feeding me very freaking 30 mins, at some point i thot they were too much, and i had the most peaceful delivery ever!

Anyone who doubts the authencity of these emails you should contact me directly at sadhi80@gmail.com. Am usually known not to finish things, but this one I've started it, I swear upon my grandma's grave that I'mma see to its end!

I have left out the names of the victims but am sure if called upon, they shall come out to bear witness to all these atrocities!

Doing business is not a bad idea, but doing it at the expense of life is utterly unacceptable!

Watch out for part three which shall not be delayed.

Cherish life, cherish one another, forward, forward and keep on forwarding. Use tweeter, facebook, gmail, yahoo word press etcetra. I attach it as a note in my facebook account and it is public, share it out to everybody in your page, let's save lives.

Don't even bother about the Medical Board, they are busy doing nothing so, let's do their jobs for them.

May justice prevail!

One love, one heart!