Mbagathi Hospital has admitted that inefficiencies in its operations led to Immaculate Auma trekking to city mortuary with the body of her dead baby last week. The hospital maintains that Auma’s baby did not die at the facility but was instead pronounced dead on arrival. Nairobi Health Executive Charles Kerich, speaking at Mbagathi, says that Auma arrived in the hospital at 9.45am with her six-month-old infant who was declared dead by a pediatric clinical officer.
He says that according to hospital policy, Auma was referred to the police to file a notification. He added that she left before the hospital could assist her to move the body; ”A nurse at the hospital offered to assist Immaculate to organise for transportation to the police station and onward to the mortuary. However, while the hospital was organising for a vehicle, the mother was discovered to have left with the body of her child.”
Auma had earlier narrated how she had to carry the body of her baby for about 5km to a mortuary because officials at a city hospital where the boy died could not help transport it. She had to undergo the agonising journey from Mbagathi Hospital, where her six-month-old baby died, to a police post at Kenyatta National Hospital, where she was required to file a notification.
She had first taken her son to Shofco Health Centre in Kibra after she realised he had a fever where he was diagnosed with pneumonia. She was advised to take the child to Mbagathi Hospital after his condition worsened where he died while being attended to.
She said with her mother, they asked the doctor if they could get help to take the child to the mortuary. They could not get any. Instead, they were told to go to the police post at KNH to get a clearance letter to take the baby to any mortuary.