A nurse-in charge of the newborn unit at Kenyatta National Hospital in
Nairobi checks on the progress of preterm babies in an incubator. PHOTOS
: BERNARDINE MUTANU/NATION
One of the reasons Kenya’s “grand march” on the road to progress
has been faltering can be traced to public institutions that succumb to
the temptation to regress.
For instance, Kenya once
had a cross-country train service that worked. That train is now the
kind of stuff from which legends are made.
Every town
had public garbage collection teams that were as predictable and regular
as clockwork. These are now history. Where trash cans once stood in
dignity, only mounds of trash are to be found.
Most
towns had scheduled council-run buses, not to mention parking meters.
There are hardly any signs of that glorious past any more except for the
odd-looking steel pipes that line some streets, forlorn reminders of a
time when there was order in towns and cities.
Now,
some public hospitals have started regressing too, charging mothers fees
for delivering babies. The managers argue that support services, such
as ICU, are not covered under the government-funded programme. One would
have thought that hospital managers appreciate the value of holistic
treatment.
If the hospitals need to raise extra money, they can first ask their ministry for it or charge for other services.
What
is worrying in the emerging trend is not that some hospitals are
charging mothers. The real danger lies more in the fact that this free
service was introduced barely eight months ago.
It
means the programme is losing steam even before it clocks its first
year. It is still too early to even get a clear picture of its overall
impact.
To ensure that the gains are not reversed,
especially for the poor, there is a need to enhance policing of public
hospitals to ensure that they do not turn back the clock of progress.
UNDOCUMENTED CITIZENS
If
the Health Ministry — and the public — fail the test of vigilance, the
price to pay will continue to be high because mothers who had been
encouraged to give birth in hospitals will start keeping away and, with
time, this will have an impact on their health and that of their
children.
It will mean that children born at home and
other not-so-ideal places will be at risk of poor health while their
mothers will be exposed to life-threatening complications.
Worse
still, if a way is not found to record the births of these children,
Kenya will have undocumented citizens who, like our grandmothers, will
only know that they were born during the rainy season in the year of the
contested election.
Although the Cabinet secretary for
Health, Mr James Macharia, says Kenya has made great strides in
reducing child and maternal deaths in the recent past, a great deal more
needs to be done to improve the quality of services offered in the
maternity wings of public hospitals.
For instance, the
number of life-saving devices, such as incubators, remains deplorably
low compared to the number of children delivered there, making it
necessary for infants to share. The problem with this is that it can
lead to cross-infection, where otherwise hale children contract
communicable diseases from those they share incubators with.
BUDGET-MAKING
Now
that the government is in the budget-making season, the Health ministry
ought to prioritise such issues and make Parliament see the need to buy
these and similar equipment in the next financial year.
Similarly,
there is a need to revisit the question of the welfare of doctors,
nurses and other staff in public hospitals. Cases of doctors quitting
the public service or offering poor services to patients because they
are unhappy with their employer have been on the rise.
Job
dissatisfaction can lead to grave consequences especially in instances
when doctors neglect patients as part of pay protests.
Health
professionals need to be reminded that they have a sacred duty to
protect lives to the best of their ability. It is part of their calling.
In
the final analysis, the goal should be to improve the health of the
citizens in the hope that this will lead to an increase in their wealth
and that of the nation.
The future of the nation rests
on the health of the children being born today and the ability of their
mothers to nurture them into responsible and productive adults.
If
this is compromised because of a charge levied on the poor, there is a
risk of burying national interest in the grave of short-term expediency.
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