The team investigating alleged cases of medical negligence at Mama Lucy Hospital has revealed that the facility's maternity ward is a course of concern.
The inspection team comprising officials from the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Council, Kenya Health professions Oversight Authority, Clinical Officers Council, the Pharmacy and Poisons Board and the Nursing Council of Kenya toured the facility on November 9 on a fact-finding mission.
The nine-member team was constituted by the Kenya Health Professions Oversight Authority CEO Dr Jackson Kioko to undertake an inspection of the facility.
The inspection came after a series of complaints from the public.
According to the report tabled before the Senate Health Committee, the maternity ward holds 71 beds and is divided into triage room, first-stage room, labour ward, post-natal ward, acute rooms, post-caesarean section rooms, sick antenatal room and sick postnatal room.
“Given the high number of patients, some of the rooms that are meant to hold only four beds have been cramped with six or seven beds, and still, in some of the rooms, some patients are sharing beds,” the report says.
The report says the labour ward has four normal hospital beds which serve as delivery couches.
“Due to the small size and layout of the delivery room, the three new resuscitates are placed outside within the nurses’ station of the labour ward which is not ideal,” it says.
The report states that the maternity unit is quite busy and the hospital conducts 1,000 deliveries on average every month, of which about 650 are normal deliveries while 350 are caesarian section deliveries.
The labour ward usually has five nurses during the day and four nurses at night.
