Good idea. But there's no political goodwill to do this.

@impunity...AGN Type 1, That is Simple Acute Glomerulo Nephritis

@baratang...here we go,

Episode 1

...It was around 10:00AM when I was leaving the opd (the outpatient department) after the brief altercation with the patients appointments booking man and headed towards the KNH KBS station. I took a KBS and alighted at the ambassadaur hotel, crossed over to Kencom where there used to be alot of telephone boothes.
It was very hot and I could feel that for every step i made my body was weakening at a rate never felt before.
I called my friend on her land line (there were no mobile phones then, and whoever had them, they were buying them at close to kshs 500,000 per hand set). Luckily enough, I managed to get the friend and I explained to her my situation. We agreed that she meet me at the kencom bus station inside the sitting area. Half an hour later she found me dozing at the seat. She immediately called her orthopaedic surgeon brother who agreed to see me in KNH. We got inside the KBS and off we went to KNH. We went straight to the room where the surgeon was stationed when he was being consulted in KNH. The lady friend at this juncture had to leave, but I instructed her to call my guardian whom I was staying with in dandora. It was around 1.30PM.
The surgeon examined me and and recommended that I be admitted immediately. I was sent to casualty to begin the process of admission. I was further examined by the doctor on duty after waiting for close to 3 hours. This is when the doctor dropped the atom bomb...that i was suffering from one of the 260 known kidney diseases and i had to be examined further through lab tests in order to know exactly which one to treat...I started making some calculations in my head, really weird calculations...if it took say 4 days for one test to be done and results released, then for 260 tests it would take 1040 days and that is almost 3 years. I was figuring here that I would be dead before they were able to determine which disease they would be treating! But that was the least of my concerns at the time.
A renal ultra sound was recommended but the doctor informed me that the institutes only machine had packed up and as such I would have to have it done in town. Next he wanted a complete haemogram (blood tests) done. Also a complete urinalysis tests were required. I just asked the doctor if he really expected me to do all that in my situation noting that even walking was a problem. He suggested that he would admit me, but before I was put onto any treatment, all those tests would have to be done.
It was around 7:00PM and my guardian had just arrived from work. The consultant gave us the lab requisitions and he told us that the haemogram and urinalysis could be undertaken in KNH labs, he directed us where to go, in addition to telling me to report to ward no. 46 after these tests.
We went to the main lab and gave out the requisitions only to be told that there were no reagents. There were 3 men in that lab. It was getting to around 9:00PM and as we sat on one of the benches along the corridor near the lab wondering what to do next, we saw one of the men who was in that lab. He was coming towards us. We stopped him and literally begged him to help us...his suggestion, toeni kitu! We parted with some money and at around midnight the haemogram and urinalysis tests samples were collected and we were adviced to pick them in the morning the following day.
After the lab, we went to ward no 46 on the 7th floor of the main block. Just before we entered the main door we could see that there was a lot of activities along the ward corridor. once inside I almost fainted on seeing the number of people who had been admitted that night...it was well over 50. At the nurse call desk, I was informed that my file had not been brought from casualty, so I was told to wait. All the benches and seats in the ward were all occupied by patients who were waiting to be assigned a space to sleep. We went down to the opd where there is quite a lot of seats and sat there for the rest of the early morning till around 5:00AM in the morning. I did not sleep and neither my guardian. We went back to the ward where my guardian left me to go and prepare to report to work.
At around 7:00AM in the morning I was assigned a space where I was going to be receiving my treatment from...the beds were full to capacity, each 3ft by 6 ft bed being shared by 4 patients. The spaces between the beds where matrices had been laid on the floor were also full (each matrice had 4 patients), but luckily enough I got a space in one of the matrices on the floor. One patient did not make it to the morning and I doubt if the other 3 patients knew that one of them had died. That is how the space became available. As I sat on that floor matrice feeling exhausted and worse off than I was the previous day, I just looked at the the three half dead patients whom I was to share the matrice with and I could not help imagining that I had voluntarily prepared my path to the KNH morgue! I walked to the window and looked at the ground below, the industrial area and Nairobi National Nark and asked myself, "Hey kaigangio, which is better, home or here?". The answer came after three months!!
Thats it folks...episode 2 to follow.

Pole sana. An accurately told story from the perspective of the patient.

Ward 46, I think, is now ward 7A.

Woooiiii. Again pole sana boss. No wonder that is why many patients requiring urgent attention dont make to see the light of the morning on easily treatable ailments if one has to undergo this kind of ordeal.

deleted

November 15 2012,spent the whole night at Kenya. Bad experience.

Pole sana alma.

I remember saying doctors nowadays put money before patients. It's a terrible thing to do. It's inhuman but it won't change anytime soon.

Afadhali to get reasonable emergency care across the road at Nairobi Hosp and be left poor and broke after selling your belongings (and fundraising) than suffer so at KNH. For chronic care, watu waende India.

My mum got an accident and what she went through at KNH casualty before she was taken to Mater for surgery scarred her. She narrates lying on a cold metal stretcher, on a freezing June night, leg broken at the tibia in 2 places, hip fractured, bleeding, in pain and with no first aid given.

I spent so much time in hospitals it drew me to medicine. At such an early age, I knew what an external fixator was, that vancomycin was 200 bob a capsule and where to harvest skin for a skin graft.

My Dad got sick once and I was out of the country. The hospital he went to referred him to KNH because he was convulsing and had altered mental state. By the time we found out he was there it was too late; he was already admitted, hands and feet tied to the bed to restrain him, wet, IV line tissued, and had received little in terms of care. He was in a sorry state. I called a Prof (who had taught me and knew our family well) to see him and he said he was too busy. I called another senior doc (who had taught me too and knew me) and he said he could only see him if he was transferred to a private hospital. It took a whole day to take him out of KNH (they charged him more than 100k for that stay).

Sadly, I think it is impossible to change KNH. I've trained and worked there and I think that is an honest opinion.

Cashiers had their own receipts. Pharmacists used to steal drugs. You had to pay a nurse extra to take give care to your patient. Radiologists would charge patients to use the radiotherapy machine and do the procedure even when the machine was broken down (many cancer patients died wondering why the disease had spread yet they went through radiotherapy).

There's a deputy director who tried to change the system at KNH and he was shot on his way home.

Ndemo's article this week



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