• While performing a C-section, surgeons left the placenta in the uterus. It decayed and the uterus had to be removed.
• The woman has lodged a complaint with the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Council but the private Mwingi facility has failed respond to claims of negligence.
Bententar Makaa was looking forward to the birth of her second child last July and because of complications, doctors recommended a C-section.
The five-month-old baby died and surgeons forgot to remove the placenta. It decayed, requiring the removal of the uterus in a hysterectomy some months later.
Now Makaa, 34, is in terrible pain, incapacitated and experiencing a foul-smelling discharge.
Doctors recommend another scan but she doesn't have the money.
She relies on her only child, a 12-year-old daughter, to wash clothes and do chores around their home in Mwingi.
Makaa has lodged a complaint with the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Council, which has sent two demand letters to the Mumbuni Maternity and Nursing Home in Mwingi. That's where the C-section was performed.
The hospital has not responded to medical board's queries for the second time, she said.
Hospital management did not pick calls from the Star seeking comment.
Makaa says the hospital is pressuring her to withdraw her case and has even urged her neighbours to prevail upon her to drop it.
"These guys at Mumbuni are trying very hard so that case can be dropped from the council," she said.
This is what happened:
Makaa was five months pregnant and had complication last July when she went to Mumbuni Maternity and Nursing Home Hospital in Mwingi. Doctors recommended a C-section.
The baby, a boy, died.
Though the stitch wounds were healing, Makaa felt unbearable pain. She was still oozing blood two months after the surgery and there was, and still is a constant discharge.
Makaa was worried and got a scan at Embu Dynamic Imaging Centre. She was told surgeons had forgotten to remove the placenta and stiched the wound.
Doctors at Embu General Hospital said the placenta had started to decay, affecting the uterus, which had to be removed in a hysterectomy.
Dead baby, no more children, constant pain.
"When I go to the clinic I'm always told to do a costly scan yet I don't have money. When I walk around there's a constant smelly discharge and I'm very embarrassed," Makaa said.
For the disability, Makaa sought redress at the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Council, lodging a complaint against the surgeons at Mumbuni hospital.
The council wrote the hospital management on February 27, seeking a detailed statement from doctors in response to Makaa's complaint. It asked the facility to defend itself against negligence claims.
Seven months on, council CEO Daniel Yumbya wrote again to the hospital on September 7, giving the management four days to respond.
No response, no help, no justice.
(Edited by V. Graham)