This archive report was first published on 12 July 2019.
Published on July 12, 2019, a shocking incident occurred at Kenyatta National Hospital's newborn unit where eleven newborns lost their lives.
The suspected cause of the deaths is a drug-resistant bacterium known as Klebsiella, which is a species of bacteria that occurs naturally in the environment but can cause severe infections.
According to sources at the hospital, the neonates died due to Klebsiella and other factors, compounded by the poor state of the ward.
Furthermore, the nurses at the hospital have had to improvise feeding tubes and syringes, which causes bruises and bleeding in the babies' noses and mouths.
Additionally, the babies are still fully breastfed, and the mothers express milk every three hours, which is fed to the babies through a nasogastric tube.
However, with the tubes perennially out of stock, the nurses are forced to use syringes and other tubes used to aspirate, which are inappropriate and hurt the babies.
A clandestine spot check at the facility revealed that up to three children share a cot, putting them at risk of infecting each other with bugs like Klebsiella.
