Persistent power outages in Lamu have caused untold suffering to patients in various hospitals in the county.
The Lamu King Fahad County Hospital and the Mpeketoni Subcounty Hospital are among those affected. The lives of patients in the ICU and babies in incubators at the two facilities continue to be in grave danger due to the situation.
The situation has also paralyzed major services in the facilities.
At the King Fahad hospital, for instance, more than 100 patients seeking X-Ray services were this week turned away as there was no electricity to power the machines.
At least 50 patients seeking similar services at the Mpeketoni Subcounty Hospital this week were also turned away.
Lamu town has been without electricity for the last four days.
On Tuesday, five patients admitted at the Lamu King Fahad’s ICU section survived narrowly after the standby
generator went off.
Hospital administrator Bill Jumlai said they had to rush for diesel before the generators resumed working minutes later.
The two hospitals accuse Kenya power of failing to notify them of impending power cuts.
Jumlai said Kenya Power should shoulder any blame arising from the outages because they are the source of the problem.
"I believe this mess should lie squarely with the KPLC.They don't notify us of anything. As a hospital, they never notified us of the recent blackout that almost cost lives," he said.
He said the affected hospitals have had to stop provision of some services, among them X-rays, because generators cannot produce enough power to run all the systems.
“Since May 1, when the frequent power cuts began, we have had to stop some services such as X-rays. Everyday, we turn away at least 50 people seeking those services. It breaks our hearts,”Jumlai said.
Power returned to Lamu late Tuesday night but even then,the power outages haven’t stopped.
The hospital administrator says that hasn’t really helped the situation and that the halted services continue to be grounded due to the fact that current load of power supply cant sustain the affected machines.
“For some reason,the power seems low or insufficient and can't run the X-ray machine and others. So we are still on generators, which is
quite expensive,”
Jumlai said.
The power cuts have also affected water supply as Lamu town remains without water for two weeks in a row.