Senators have raised concerns about the detention of patients and bodies in situations where families are unable to pay medical bills, especially in private hospitals.
Some Kenyans have had to take out loans, sell their properties, organise fundraisers or appeal for donations from friends and well-wishers to clear their bills.
Led by Senate Health Committee Chairman Michael Mbito (Trans Nzoia), the lawmakers wants immediate measures taken to regulate and address the financing of the health sector.
Mbito reiterated that there are countless accounts of distraught families having to deal with rogue hospitals that refuse to release bodies of their deceased relatives for burial because of huge outstanding medical bills.
“Cases of relatives having to end up in court for intervention to enable them to bury their dead are also rampant and cannot be overstated,” Mbito said.
“This is a very sad state of affairs and the cruelty meted on the poor patient’s parents and relatives of this boy is unfathomable,” he added.
The senator cited cases including the Nairobi Hospital which was taken to court vide Case No.407 of 2012 over the detention of a deceased person
Karen Hospital was also taken to court over the same issue vide Case No.448 of 2015
Most recently in 2017, he recounted, a police officer whose twins died after birth was detained in a Nairobi hospital for failure to foot a bill of Sh3 million.
“I am further perturbed by the current story of a family in Gatuikira, Kiambu County, which in March was forced to hold the burial of their son without the body,” Mbito reckoned.
This was after the body was detained at Gertrudes Children’s Hospital over a bill amounting to Sh17.8 million.
The 13-year-old boy, Brian Kimani, passed away in February this year.
“He had been undergoing treatment for Leukemia for five and a half months before he passed on,’ the senator said.
Mbito said it was unconstitutional and unacceptable by any standards for a family to have to bury an empty a coffin because of inability to raise the hospital bill is.
“As the Chairman Committee on Health, I wish to make an undertaking to follow up on the case of young Brian and any other Kenyan who might be undergoing a similar situation and report to this House in due course,” he promised.
He wants the government to ensure that no one is treated in a manner that causes them mental, emotional and physical pain or in any manner that humiliates them.
Nominated Senator Farhiya Ali blamed Kenya’s liberal economy for the exorbitant prices that people are being charged calling on various facilities to have a humane face to on their billing.
“When somebody is charged after the loss of a loved one that is double tragedy for them. These people are left with huge bills. It is like the person has died twice and people are so helpless, especially people who are unstable financially. All Kenyans are not the same,” Farhiya said.
Senator Isaac Mwaura (nominated) narrated how he was on the process of processing a letter to Kenyatta University Teaching, Referral and Research Hospital concerning the detention of the body Andie Wanjiru , who passed at the facility on April 7, 2020.
The body was detained over an outstanding bill of Sh1.3 million.
“This is a very serious issue because we have indigents; people who cannot pay and will not pay. How do you deal with that?” Mwaura asked.
