Parents cry for justice as son dies from alleged negligence at Moi County Referral Hospital

Voi,

Wednesday, October 25, 2023

KNA by Wagema Mwangi

Scevar Nzai, 50, makes the portrait of a father in pain. Seated on a stool outside his house at Mazeras village on the outskirts of Voi town in Voi sub-county, he cuts the image of a man yet to come to terms with the death of his eight-year old son.

When he smiles, it is with the forced distraction of one whose mind is far away.

“The hospital let me down. Had they worked, perhaps this death would have been avoided,” he mumbles in a subdued tone. Then he adds as though an afterthought “And had death been unavoidable, maybe it would have been understandable.”

Days after his son died at Moi County Referral Hospital (MCRH) in Voi town, the distraught father is still tortured by the traumatic experience of watching his son die on a hospital bed as he stood by helplessly.

He seeks closure from anger, anguish and pain that come from unexpected death. Still, he Mr. Nzai says only truth and justice will fully set him free and permit his disturbed conscience to rest easy.

 “I want justice because I believe had they done what medics are supposed to do, none of this could have happened,” he says, noting that a section of medics at MCRH and senior officials of the health department in Taita-Taveta County failed his son.

On Friday afternoon of Mashujaa Day, he had rushed his son to the referral hospital after the latter complained of a headache. The son had been attending clinics at the facility after a formal discharge from Kenyatta National Hospital where he was undergoing treatment for Leukemia since August 2022.

At the referral hospital, a doctor recommended an urgent CT scan to show whether there were internal injuries. That marked the genesis of his woes.

“We were told there was no portable oxygen to take our son to the CT scan room. We had to look for the oxygen cylinders ourselves yet there were nurses and medics present,” recalls the father.

Even after a cylinder was later found, their troubles kept mounting. The radiographer who operated the CT scan was nowhere to be found. Efforts to reach out to the hospital administration and health officials to make things move were futile.

With little else left, the family sat for over six hours outside the CT scan room until it was too cold for the sickly son. They took him to the ward where he passed on in the early hours of Saturday morning.

“We watched him die in our hands. How can we pride ourselves in having a referral hospital that allows children to die?” asked the grieving father.

Ms. Euphemia Kinoi, the mother of the boy, says the sheer indifference from medics remains the most painful experience for the family. The cold treatment leaves them with questions on whether their son would have lived had the staff been more accommodating and professional.

She points out that the fact that they were left on their own to struggle to make things move is an indicator of laxity and lack of empathy by employees at the facility.

 “We had ran around searching for oxygen tanks to help our son. If things were not working, why couldn’t they give us a referral to another facility to get those services?” she asks.

The County health department says it is following up the case to locate the lapse that could have occurred. The County Executive Committee Member for Health Services Mr. Gifton Mkaya says an audit of the system is being undertaken to establish what transpired that night.

“We are doing an audit to establish the truth and we shall respond when the report is out,” he said.There are reports that a reshuffle had been done for staff working in the radiology department. However, such actions and words offer scant comfort to the grieving parents.

Mr. Nzai says the only true recourse is to hold accountable the people whose negligence led to the death of his son.

Courtesy; KNA