Kiambu: Hospital where woman died while giving birth shut down

The Medical Practitioners and Dentists Board on Thursday revoked the registration and license of St. Teresa Maternity & Nursing Home in Kikuyu, Kiambu County, following an incident where a woman died while giving birth at the facility.

The Board, in a statement sent to newsrooms, said the action was taken after public outcry that patients seeking services at the hospital were allegedly being mishandled.

“In view of the above complaints, the Medical Practitioners and Dentists Board, Nursing Council of Kenya and the County Government of Kiambu carried out a joint inspection and clinical audit whose preliminary findings identified glaring gaps which cannot be sufficiently addressed while the facility is still in operation,” read the statement signed by the Board Chair, Dr. Eva W. Njenga.

The medical practitioners’ body also cancelled the operational licence for the facility’s medical director, Dr. Moses Mwaura.

Kiambu County Health CEC was further directed to coordinate and ensure smooth transfer of all patients to government facilities within the next 24 hours.

“The Acting Chief Executive Officer, National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) is directed to ensure that any of the affected patients who are covered under the NHIF are facilitated appropriately,” added the statement.

Hellen Wanjiru was reportedly taken to the hospital where she was supposed to give birth to her third baby but developed complications during delivery.

According to a relative who narrated the incident on social media, Ms. Wanjiru arrived at the hospital at 8:30pm but was only attended to at around 11pm.

Medical personnel are said to have informed her family members that she would deliver through Cesarean Section (CS); only for them to later discover that she was dead.

They then brought the facility to a standstill demanding answers as to what happened to their kin and, by the time police officers arrived on scene, the doctor and nurses involved in the botched surgery had already fled the facility.