Families are struggling to find beds in hospital for severely ill Covid-19 patients, and where a bed is found, they have to part with hundreds of thousands of shillings in deposit before admission.
For six hours, Winnie Oketch’s family struggled to get a bed in hospitals in Nairobi. Phone calls were made from hospital to hospital, to no avail.
At exactly 11:55am on Wednesday, March 31, they made the first call to Kenyatta National Hospital requesting an intensive care unit (ICU) bed, since the 48-year-old had started developing breathing difficulties.
The phone was engaged for almost 20 minutes before went through.
“Right now, all the beds are full and we are not admitting,” said the voice on the other end.
“Can’t we get a bed at the High Dependency Unit for her to be stabilised?” asked her son, Michael Otieno.
“I am sorry but all the beds are occupied,” was the response.
At the time, the family was moving around with the patient looking for space.
The next call was to the Kenyatta University Teaching and Referral Hospital. Unfortunately, there was no space. Mbagathi Hospital was also full