New 66-bed wing and ICU for Mama Lucy

Mama Lucy Hospital will open a 66-bed maternity wing in January.

The block will also have an ICU, a High-Dependency Unit and general wards, decongesting the main wing of the hospital.

Kenyatta National Hospital is the only other county health facility with an ICU.

“Our mothers will acquire the best maternity care that the facility will officer,” county Health chief officer Mohammad Sahal said on Sunday

He said its completion will increase the number of patients in the facility.

In two years, patients have increased to 314,000 from 214,150 in 2017, a 32 per cent rise. The numbers will increase further once the new block is opened,” Sahal said.

This financial year the maternity wing was allocated Sh100 million.

The wing is a six-floor, H-shaped addition construction, which started in 2013, but stalled in 2016 due to underfunding.

In May this year, the Sh69 million Phase One was 85 per cent complete.

Mama Lucy is also experiencing a staff deficit of 284.

In July this year, the hospital's human resources department said there are 468 staff against a requirement of 752.

The hospital's chronic shortage covers both skilled and unskilled staff, including specialists, doctors, nurses, lab technologists and non-medical staff such as clerks and accountants.

To address the issue, 94 casuals were hired in the 2017-18 financial year for Sh10. 3 million.

The medical shortage is not confined to Mama Lucy but extends to all public health facilities in the city.

For the past two years, the Health docket has received the largest share of the county budget.

The Health docket has in the past two financial years received the lion’s share of the county budget.

In 2018-19, it got Sh6.2 billion and Sh6.3 billion in 2017-18. About Sh7.4 billion has been allocated to the Health department this financial year.

That is 21 per cent of the county's Sh35.3 budget.

Nairobi has 1,575 nurses, 1,160 of them members of the Kenya National Union of Nurses. The rest belong to the Kenya County Government Workers’ Union.

As a result, Nairobi Governor Mike Sonko this week announced that 300 health workers will be employed to reduce the workforce deficit in February 2019

This will mark the first phase of the planned employment of 2,500 workers in all  county health facilities.

The new employees will be distributed equally across all the 39 health facilities in the county.

They include 260 nurses and clinical officers and 60 medical officers.

(Edited by V. Graham)