Mama Lucy doctor on why they kept patient bleeding for six hours; 'Her blood pressure was high'

Maureen Onyango died at the Kiambu Level 5 hospital, where she was later referred to, on September 6 after experiencing excessive bleeding without being attended to for 6 hours at the Mama Lucy Hospital. 

According to a narration from her husband Robert Omondi on November 1, they arrived at Mama Lucy's gate at 10:45pm where she was admitted until 7:00am the following day when she underwent a cesarean section surgery. 

Maureen started bleeding after delivering twin babies until she breathed her last at the hospital.

In its rebuttal on Monday, a gynecologist acknowledged before the Senate Committee on Health that indeed Mrs. Onyango bled for 6 hours, claiming that they could not stabilize her high blood pressure.

"Maurine was received at 10.15 pm, emergency CS was performed at 7.00 am, she needed to be stabilised due to her blood pressure and high pulse. We kept her for 6 hours waiting because we had to lower her blood pressure, the bleeding started after the operation," he said.

"It is true that the patient had bled, it is true that intervention could have been done earlier, and she died because of losing a lot of blood."

In the tear-jerking testimony before the committee last week, Mr. Omondi said that he first realised something was wrong when he noticed Maureen was bleeding.

"I realised my wife was bleeding after the CS & a nurse I alerted ignored me," Omondi told the committee on Tuesday.

To stop the heavy bleeding, Omondi said that he alternated between attending to his newborns who were not breastfeeding, and placing cotton wool on his wife's privates to stop the bleeding.

"For all those hours I was placing cotton in my wife’s private parts the cotton was completely drenched in blood. There was no one to give us another, leave alone assist us," he said.

He claimed that two nurses arrived after several hours and took the two babies to the wards, informing him that his wife was experiencing excessive bleeding and would require a referral to a different facility.

He was also told he would need Ksh.200,000 for the emergency referral, but even so, he had to wait for two hours for the ambulance, since there was no driver available.

Mr Omondi claims that when the ambulance arrived, the driver wasted a lot of time asking other drivers for directions to Kiambu Hospital.

At the hospital Maureen was wheeled into the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), as staffers asked him to leave and return the next morning. 

Omondi, who says he camped at a tent in the hospital till daybreak, says he was informed at around 7 am that his wife had died.

Omondi's family has since sought justice, blaming the hospital for negligence.