A family is in distress after their daughter was taken to the hospital for an eye surgery but came out with missing teeth and is now fighting for her life in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU).
Martha Wanjiku, a mother of two and a casual labourer in Molo, Nakuru County in Kenya, says she has known no peace since December 22, 2018. Her 11-year-old daughter and first born child is battling for her life at a Nairobi hospital after what Martha claims was a botched eye surgery at the PCEA Kikuyu Mission Hospital.
According to the woman, her daughter, Caren, had accompanied her to the farm when she was pierced in the eye by a cutlass.
The girl’s screams of pain, as Martha narrates, is what notified her of her daughter’s injury and it wasn’t long before they got to the Nakuru Provincial General Hospital to seek treatment.
Unfortunately, due to lack of doctors to conduct the cornea repair surgery at the hospital, they were referred to the PCEA Kikuyu Mission Hospital.
What was to be a simple surgery turned out to be the beginning of a nightmare for the family as soon as her daughter was wheeled into theater at 4.30pm on December 22, 2018. The girl remained in the theatre for quite a long time, building up anxiety for the mother on what could have gone wrong.
Martha demanded to see the state of her child, and she was informed by the doctor who conducted the operation, that her child needed to be taken to the intensive care unit as she had failed to wake up as expected.
Unfortunately, the available bed at the hospital’s ICU unit was set to cater for a more complicated case, and they were referred to another hospital.
According to the mission hospital administration, the doctors involved explained everything that happened during the surgery, but the mother insists that there are many details that have been left out. After the said surgery, Martha says, her daughter developed a breathing complication and moreover had missing teeth.
“My daughter has no teeth, they didn’t tell us why they removed them. Yet she was going into the theater for an eye surgery. Now I have a bill of Ksh.2 million from all these complications,” says the mother.
She is now demanding justice for her daughter against the PCEA Kikuyu Mission Hospital whose doctors insist they did everything by the book.