Report reveals Kenyatta National Hospital has other cases of malpractice

The past week has been a total show of how some medical practitioners do not take the life of their patients seriously.

On Wednesday a report released by the Ministry of Health showed about 20 women are dying every day while giving birth. According to the report, most of the deaths were caused by health workers who did nothing to help the women, did the wrong thing or were not on duty.

Nine out of 10 women who died giving birth got sub-standard treatment with the assessors concluding that if the women had been under a different management they may have lived. But investigations show KNH is no stranger to swapped medical records and test results and even never-delivered laboratory findings.

Medical negligence

A report published last year says: “Determination of errors that compromise the quality of laboratory services in a tertiary hospital,” shows medical negligence at KNH to be a deeply entrenched affair.

Led by an Assistant Chief Medical Laboratory Officer at KNH, the study had investigated 346 lab requests at the hospital’s clinical laboratory for a three-month period.

Almost all requests had mistakes, most of which ended up compromising the treatment of patients, says the study published in the Asian Journal of Medical Sciences. The single largest mistake in numbers was lack of address in the job request card indicating where or to what clinic or ward or doctor the results should be returned.