Pumwani Maternity Hospital gets facelift

Pumwani Maternity Hospital gets facelift

At the country’s oldest maternity hospital, Ephy Akinyi is all smiles as she holds dearly to her bundle of joy.

” I came to Pumwani hospital on the eve of December 25 and was taken to theater where i delivered my baby. I was very impressed with how clean and organized the hospital was. The food was also okay. I have no regrets for coming here,” said Ephy.

But this new mom could have had a different story if she had visited the hospital a few months earlier.

Pumwani earlier on had a dilapidated infrastructure, uncollected garbage, and open waste pipes just to mention but a few.

This coupled with harrowing tales lamented by suffering mothers at the facility at that time.

Fast forward to today and renovations that have so far cost Ksh.50 million have taken place. For the first time, the hospital is equipped with a morgue.

Speaking to Citizen TV, the hospital Administrator Geoffrey Mosiria highlighted the changes the hospital has made in order to ease congestion and ensure mothers are comfortable and have a serene atmosphere.

“For the last five years Pumwani used to be viewed by the public as a hospital that does not take care of its patients, but we have had changes of late,….. we have the painting works….we didn’t have a mortuary, a cold room, now we have that and it  is fully function,” said Mosira.

“We have 9 wards nowe. the wards which lay idle because they were not in good shape have been repaired and are in use,” he added.

Lack of cold rooms meant dead bodies were literally wrapped in boxes; a disturbing reality unearthed by Nairobi Governor Mike Sonko who recently made an impromptu visit and found corpses of twelve infants hidden at the facility. Improvements in wards has also eased congestion.

The hospital Chief Nursing Officer George Nyadimo added that the labor wards were getting full to the brim but the hospital was working hard to mitigate that.

“We used to have 60 deliveries in a day, now we have a hundred plus deliverers in a day, and on top of that, patients are also waiting…health workers are putting effort to ensure they go by pace of the patients. The hospital has also installed this new oxygen plant, cutting down on medical gas expenses,’ said Nyadimo.

According to the staff here at Pumwani Maternity Hospital, women visiting this facility are of late receiving better services than before. They cite a significant reduction in cases of maternal and child mortalities as one of the factors.

“We have like around 10 deaths per month as opposed to before where we used to have 30 babies dying, this is because of improved services,” added Nyadimo.

The hospital is however ill-equipped to handle emergencies. It lacks an ICU while the High Dependency Unit requires significant improvement.

Without a functional blood bank, doctors here have to seek help from the Kenya national blood transfusion service.

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