WHY YOU SHOULD ALL AVOID THE NAIROBI WOMEN’S HOSPITAL (PART 11)

I owe it upon all the victims of the Nairobi Women’s Hospital who sent me their stories to publish the same.

So far, nothing positive has come out of our campaigns, I had a few journalists contact me and I tried putting them in touch with the victims, I hope they are looking into the matter.

Some victims were totally adamant to bring out their stories but the situation is quiet understandable because maybe they belong to the lot who came to a mutual agreement with the management of the hospital, as one of the victims wrote and told me that she is barred from disclosing the terms of her situation any further after a settlement was made. Could this be the strategy Dr. Sam Nthenya uses when he says that he handles all the cases separately and individually? What a pity!

Today I post stories from a couple of victims, like I always say, for as long as one went through a terrible moment at the hospital, it can never be stale news!

1. Thanks alot for this...I happened to take my girlfriend there for delivery....It was a normal delivery, which i dint expect to go over 50,000,but for two days they charged me 77k..after complaining and following up it came to 60,000.

It is a cartel to eat money and even the CEO knows...it starts with the Cashier to the doctors, especially if you have an insurance cover,they will take you for C/S...they are so nasty.

Thank you for your email which has highlighted many pertinent issues affecting women and kenyans at large.

2. I am a victim of Nairobi Women’s Hospital and mine was ugly as it was my first child and knew nothing about children and the whole process.I have come to learn that no one can ever prepare you. I was admitted under the short martenity package at the hospital on the 27th of May 2007 to deliver my 1st baby. I was 25 years old then. a young excited girl. I attended 5 anti natal clinics at the facility and even went for a scan as was advised by the doctors. my due date was meant to be 21st of May 2007 and since it was my 1st pregnancy I decided to go for induction of labour. I packed my stuff and headed to hospital on the fateful night. i saw the doctor who allowed me to be induced into labour. I was admitted and the normal procedures followed. to cut the long story short ,my labour did not advance up to the 29th of May . That is when the real labour started. I was in a drip and in so much pain , I asked to see a doctor and the nurses just kept disappearing. finally they came and told me that the doctor was not available.
   
   A midwife came to check me, i was not dilated, so i was taken to the delivery room with a drip(the pain is out of this world) still going through and at one point was left alone with a friend of mine at the delivery room. The experience was not horrifying but scarey. I waited in the delivery room till a doctor came and had to be taken to theatre. that is not the end. I had an emergency caesarean  section and the baby was born with severe birth asphyxia . The child had to be transferred to Agakhan University Hospital ,he stayed in the i.c.u for 21 days and the baby was discharged. any way after leaving the child was referred to an occupational therapist who diagnosed the baby with cerebral palsy. I am now raising a child with cerebral palsy .
   
   That is my story.

3. Hi Suzane,
   Now, here is why I would join your course. Back in 2007, my sister used to go for clinics at Acacia. The gynae there had rights atr NWH. One fine morning as she neared her EDD, she
   goes for routine check up and is told the placenta has gone round the baby's neck. It was not a problem until a nurse there sarcastically asked 'na wewe ulidanganywa aje ukakuja CS?' we thought she was just being arrogant  and we hated her for those remarks. 2 years later, my siz was there again! This time, she opted for Aga Khan. She was very determined to have a vaginal delivery. But doctors at Aga Khan asked her how come she had been operated, they discouraged her against a normal delivery because the labour would rapture the earlier stitches. What the nurse at NWH had asked now got us thinking and we understood she may have had a point. A lady doctor interviewed my sister and asked; what prompted your first operation? Mi siz said, 'the placenta had gone round the baby's neck. How did the doctor know, did he do a scan on you? No, my sister answered. And so we learned that something was veeeeeeery wrong.

4. Hello,

My wife recently delivered our son at NWH Rongai branch. We chose this hospital due to the proximity of our residence but what we experienced there surely leaves a lot to be desired. First of all the prenatal visits were a nightmare; we used to spend not less than 5 hours each visit before we could see a doctor and mark you it is not because the hospital is busy, the staff are just slow, incompetent and minding their own business instead of attending to patients. Then came the day of the delivery, first a Dr Orina told me that the birth would be normal and that we should just give her time. Then after about 2 hrs they suggested that labor should be induced so she was put on the drip.   That was at around 8 pm. The nurses would check on her after every 2 hrs and inform her that she was doing fine and she was going to deliver normally. Then at around 4 am they decided that it was time so they took her to the delivery room and tried to force her to deliver normally even after cutting her vagina to no avail. That is when they decide that she was too small and that her hips could not allow her to deliver normally something they could have known all along if they were even 1 % competent. So they went ahead and did the CS and thank God the baby was fine. But now when it came to the time of being discharged, I was given the invoice and charges that were there were out of this world. It was alleged that she was attended to by 3 different surgeons namely Dr. Orina, Dr May Matilu, Dr. Peter Mutie with each surgeon charging a separate amount. I asked what is so difficult with a CS that it needed 3 different surgeons but I did not get any meaningful answer. I came to realise later that this was a ploy to make money out of unsuspecting clients.  Also the drugs, materials and visits by the doctor and nurses during the 3 days that my wife was admitted were inflated to the roof but there is nothing I could do about it. Then when she was discharged Dr. Orina prescribed a certain drug to control her blood pressure, everytime she took this drug she would get severe headaches and feel very dizzy to the point of fainting. I suspected something wrong and took her to a different doctor, when I showed the new doctor the prescription given by Dr. Orina he was amazed and very angry as it turned out that Orina had prescribed a dose twice as much as she should be taking and if she would have gone on to finish the dose it would have had adverse effects. This is very alarming and saddening that a "professional" who is entrusted with people's lives can be so incompetent. 

There are also allegations that nurses on duty at night usually sleep in the patients' beds but this I cannot substantiate since I have never been admitted.

I just hope that info this will put out what is happening inside that hospital and it will help my fellow Kenyans in making decisions. 

After sending out the complaints to the Kenya Medical and Practitioners Board, they sent out a form to be filled, requiring a payment of Kshs. 2,000/=, I didn’t understand how they wanted us to go about the matter, I totally did not understand the basis of that form.

My advice to you all, please be informed before-hand about what awaits you during delivery, talk to your mothers, your grandmothers to hear how they went about delivering up to 14kids without any hassle. Today, delivering has become like a silent massacre and no one is bold enough to bring it up. The obituaries on our local newspapers speak for themselves, what of those who never get to publish their messages? Let’s help save womanhood from perishing under negligent hands like those of the staff of the Nairobi Women’s Hospital.