This archive report was first published on 4 August 2020.
On Tuesday, a group of Covid-19 patients in isolation at Kericho County Hospital staged a protest, highlighting the dire conditions they were facing. One patient, who had been under seclusion, allegedly left the isolation ward to search for food at a nearby hotel.
According to a video that went viral on social media, the patient claimed to have been abandoned by health officials from the county government, who had dropped him at the hospital days ago. The patient, who was later returned to the isolation center, alleged that he had been forced to sneak out of the facility due to hunger.
“I starved throughout the night. That is why I decided to sneak out of the hospital to look for breakfast in a nearby hotel located outside the health facility,” the patient said in the video.
The patient, a father of nine from Kapkisimba village in Bomet county, also claimed that he had not been provided with his Covid-19 test results and was suffering from diabetes. He turned his anger towards Bomet governor Hillary Barchok and a local Member of County Assembly (MCA), whom he claimed he had tried to contact but in vain.
However, Kericho County Health Chief Officer Dr David Ekuwam dismissed the patient's claims, stating that the hospital had a catering service that provided meals to all patients. He argued that the complaint was an isolated case and that none of the other Covid-19 patients at the hospital had complained about hunger.
Dr Ekuwam also described the patient as asymptomatic, but acknowledged that he had asked for a full report on the incident.
