This archive report was first published on 7 June 2020.
On May 21, Alice Adhiambo, 31, checked into Nakuru Level Five Hospital due to high blood pressure, which put her and her unborn baby at risk. She gave birth to a 2.6 kilogramme baby boy through caesarean section on May 29.
However, Adhiambo's joy was short-lived as she discovered that her baby had been swapped with a dead one. She claimed that the nurses told her that her child had died, but when she demanded to see the body, she was shown a wrapped baby with a greenish color and a birthmark on the face, which did not match her child's description.
The hospital's medical superintendent, Dr Joseph Mburu, denied Adhiambo's claims, stating that the child was born pre-term and that a DNA test would be conducted to establish the truth. However, discrepancies emerged between the birth notification and a burial permit issued to the hospital, which indicated that the child was born dead on May 29, but the burial permit stated that the child died aged one day.
Adhiambo's ordeal has been exacerbated by the fact that she was given a different file as a record for her child, and her patient number was recorded as 792173, but at the hospital billing records, the number had been assigned to a different patient.
Dr Mburu admitted that there were some errors on the records, but the inpatient number belonged to Adhiambo. He promised to conduct a DNA test to establish the truth of the matter.
