Investigative Report by Leo Odera Omolo In Kericho Town

Ailing Kenyans are known to be succumbing to their deaths from incurable diseases owing to inadequate medical facilities, shortage of hospitals well stocked with drugs, neglected health centers, idle and understaffed hospitals.

This writer has discovered that some hospitals which were built with millions of taxpayers money are idle, neglected or understaffed.

One of these facilities, which gives the bad example of total neglect to the important medical facilities in this country is the ultra modern Sigowet Hospital, which is located within the County of Kericho’s newly created Sigowet district in lower Belgut.

The buildings housing the sub-district hospital stands magnificently beside the min-Sondu-Sosiot district.

The institution was built about twenty years ago. It was a pet project of the retired President Daniel Arap Moi. The government is believed to have sunk as much as close to Kshs 200 million in putting up this ultra modern medical facility.

Sigowet hospital is strategically located in a densely populated region. If it s put to a better used, it could be promoted to a level Five Hospital. It caters for patients from several administrative districts in Nyanza and the South Rift region of the Rift Valley Province.

These districts include Rachuonyo South, North Mugirango Borabu, Sotik, Kericho, Nyakach, Bureti, Nyando, Muhoroni and Rachuonyo North.

Sigowet hospital has yet to be officially commissioned to cater for both inpatient and outpatients respectively, though it is currently rendering skeleton services members of the public despite of the repeated requests by the residents to the Prime Minister Raila Odinga and the Minister for Medical Services Prof. Anyang’ Nyong’ to pay an urgent visit to the facility to have it upgraded.

Sigowet hospital despite having all the building extra facilities such as xray, laboratory has only six staff working at the institution. They comprised of our nurses and two medical technicians. There is no resident doctor whereas the facility is a big complex which could accommodate s many as ten medical doctors, specialists, surgeons.

This important ,but neglect facility could could provide the opponent of the coalition with good ammunition during the forthcoming general elections. Already the residents of Sigowet an area which has recently been gazetted as one of the 80 additional parliamentary constituencies counry wide to place the blame at the doorstep of the incumbent area MP Charles Keter who they said appeared to spent most f his valuable time drumming for the support of his political friend, the Eldoret MP William Ruto and in the course of doing that has totally neglected his constituents and openly abandoned the new hospital not pressing the government to supply the facility with adequate number of medics to man it.

Keter has since stated that he will not defend his parliamentary seat at the next general elections and would instead campaign for the lucrative position of Kericho County governor.

The neglected facility stands only a few meters from the main Sondu-Sosiot-Kericho road and would go down in history as one of the best medical institutions established in he region by the former KANU regime.

Another hospital, which is also facing semi-neglect, is the Awendo based sub-district hospital. Here those assigned to man the facility have no business asking the parents Ministry to supply it with adequate number of qualified medics. The hospital is relying mainly on volunteers, most of the untrained women from the surrounding rural locations. These women work as cleaners and maintenance staff, but are not on anybody’s payroll.

The women comes either twice or thrice a week from the rural villages, Resident of this fast rowing rural farming town are wondering as to where the money meant for the annual medical votes for the Ministry of Medical Services goes, if hey cannot engage adequate staff to man their facilities in rural areas.

The area MP is Dalmas Otieno who is also the Minister for Pubic Services could not b e reached to shade any light why the government cannot employ qualified nurses to work at the Awendo hospital.

It is not unusual to find some old women working at the hospital as untrained midwives and nurses or cleaners. The women said they were told about three years ago to star working at the facility as volunteers an that they would be considered for permanent employment. Some of the do commute from as far as seven to eight kilometers from the surrounding rural locations in Sakwa East ad Sakwa South Locations.

One civic leader in Awendo Town Council scathingly criticized the Minister for Medical Services Prof. Nyong’o for gross inefficiency and for having failed to provide Kenyans with proper medical protection and gross negligence and called for the Minister to be reshuffled and transfer to a lesser important Ministry.

Ends