Public Health officials in Kajiado are on high alert to avert a possible outbreak of cholera after one case was confirmed at the Kajiado County Referral Hospital.
The County Director of Medical Services (CDMS), Dr. Ezekiel Kapkoni, confirmed that the hospital received the patient, who had been referred from another facility in Kitengela town.
“Immediately she said she had been diagnosed with cholera strains at the Kitengela hospital, we isolated her together with another person who had accompanied her,” said Kapkoni on Thursday.
Earlier reports, indicated that as soon as the patient arrived at the hospital and announced her status, all the nurses and patients at the reception ran in different directions.
It took the effort of senior nurses and medical doctors to clear the area and order for disinfection of the entire place before business resumed.
The patient, according to an eye witness at the hospital was accompanied by a man and they were together rushed to a TB manyata outside the hospital’s gate for observation.
The CDMS said the patient is responding well to treatment, but accused the doctors and administrators at
the Kitengela Medical Services of risking lives by releasing a confirmed cholera patient to mingle with other members of the public.
“They should have isolated the patient and asked for support from us. This is a serious lapse in management of the highly infectious case. She endangered her life and those of the passengers she travelled with in a matatu to Kajiado town,” said Kapkoni.
However, Kapkoni gave assurance that the case has been contained and the patient was responding well to drugs.
He confirmed that man who escorted the woman is under observation, but the fate of the people who travelled with them in a matatu from Kitengela to Kajiado remains unknown.
But the Kitengela Medical Services administrator, Moses Saningo, absolved himself from blame, noting that the doctors separated the alleged patient from other sick people, but as they were organizing for an ambulance to take her to the referral hospital in Kajiado, she disappeared.
“When the hospital ambulance to take her to Kajiado arrived, she was nowhere to be found,”Saniango explained.
Meanwhile, the health department has urged locals to practice proper food hygiene and sanitation and report all cases of diarrhoea to medical facilities for immediate investigation and treatment.
By Rop Janet
