• On August 30, Health CS Mutahi Kagwe made a claim that Kenya had only 8 ICU beds when the first Coronavirus case was reported.
• In March a fact-check was done on a similar claim and there was no readily available data on critical care services provided by hospitals registered by the Ministry of Health.
Image: MERCY MUMO
On August 30, Health CS Mutahi Kagwe made a claim that Kenya had only eight ICU beds when the first coronavirus case was reported.
Kagwe, while addressing a virtual conference attended by President Uhuru Kenyatta, Deputy William Ruto, Cabinet secretaries and the Council of Governors, said after county governments had accessed Sh5 billion conditional grants from the national government, the capacity had been increased.
Let's never forget where we were. When this pandemic started, we had 8 beds in the whole country, today every county has got a higher capacity than the entire country had. - CS Mutahi Kagwe. #Covid19ConferenceKE pic.twitter.com/FeKUknlhmu
— NTV Kenya (@ntvkenya) August 31, 2020
Then being day 170 since the first case was reported on March 11, the number of cases had increased to 34,057 from 450,146 cumulative samples tested.
Then we had 19,688 recoveries with 574 deaths.
But is this claim by the CS true?
In March, Kenyans sparked a debate on the country’s preparedness and capacity to handle the pandemic.
While some Kenyans claimed that there were only 155 ICU beds and less than 100 ventilators, others claimed there were 130 beds out of which 80 per cent are routinely occupied, leaving only 26 available for previously unpredictable situations like patients with severe respiratory illnesses, such as Covid-19.
PesaCheck thus did a fact-check to verify the claims.
By the time the fact check was conducted, there was no readily available data on critical care services provided by hospitals registered by the Ministry of Health.
Health CAS Mercy Mwangangi, whom ministry officials said was the right person to respond to the questions, did not avail the data as requested.
But Kagwe, in a press briefing on March 29, stated that the country had at least 1,000 ICU beds, and had received 250 ventilators from the World Bank.
PesaCheck in their research found a research article in the East African Medical Journal in 2015 on 21 leading healthcare centres in the country, which included referral, mission, private and level 5 hospitals.
The study looked at the availability and serviceability of ICU equipment, availability of essential drugs and diagnostic support services used in the care of critically ill patients, and found it to be > 95% in private and mission hospitals, and 60–80% in the other hospitals.
This means that at any one point, nine out of 10 ICU beds are available at private and mission hospitals, and six to eight beds out of 10 in the other hospitals.
The report showed Kenya had 130 ICU beds in 2015, and a number of hospitals have increased their critical care capacity in the five years since the study was published, as well as new medical facilities being opened.
Therefore, the claim by Health CS Mutahi Kagwe that Kenya had only eight ICU beds is misleading.
To support the idea of 130 beds, a Google spreadsheet posted on Twitter on March 30 indicated the number of ICU beds and ventilators available at each private hospital.
In total, the document claimed there were 314 ICU beds and 259 ventilators in private healthcare facilities.
Though the user did not respond when asked to name the source, PesaCheck reached out to Karen Hospital, St Luke Hospital, Aga Khan Hospital and St Francis Hospital, which were on the list and their tally of ICU beds and ventilators matched what was on the document.
This story was produced by The Star in partnership with Code for Africa’s iLAB data journalism programme, with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie.