Kiambu County has denied allegations that 136 newborn babies died as a result of the ongoing health crisis in the county.
Appearing on NTV on Tuesday October 7, Patrick Nyagah, the County Health Officer, accused the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Union (KMPDU) of exaggerating the number of newborn deaths.
According to Mr Nyagah, the union was doing this to cause alarm and paint an inaccurate picture of the current situation.
Nyagah explained that in some cases the deaths were not verified, adding that most of them happened in referral centers, where there was a possibility that some of the ‘deaths’ being recorded were of casualties that had already come in as corpses.
The senior county official noted that this could lead to inflated numbers and, without the required verification from the Ministry of Health, result in inaccuracies.
“When we look at these alarmist numbers, we find that in every category, they (KMPDU) have doubled the numbers. This is malice, putting out numbers that do not exist. The numbers that we are dealing with at this point are equal to the numbers that we were dealing with last year when there was no strike,” Nyagah noted.
“When we do not have strikes or disputes, we still have some losses through referral centres. And those are the numbers we can not refer to. So you find what someone did is pick those numbers, add them, and make it look like it was an issue of the last three months,” he added.
He gave the example of Thika Level Five Hospital, where numbers by KMPDU for September pointed towards 36 newborn deaths, while the county numbers stood at 11.
As for the recording of statistics, Nyagah disclosed that a department in the Health Ministry was responsible for this activity. The department would record and verify the figures based on three key metrics: believability, accuracy, and completeness.
Nyagah’s response came hours after doctors threatened to paralyse hospitals through a nationwide strike as a fresh feud with governors threatened to reach new heights.
In a fiery statement on Monday, October 6, the KMPDU condemned the Council of Governors (CoG) over its response to the alleged deaths of 136 newborns in Kiambu County.
The union accused governors of what they described as "callous insensitivity" after the CoG dismissed media reports and KMPDU's claims about the deaths of the newborns in Kiambu. In an earlier statement, CoG Chairperson and Wajir Governor Ahmed Abdullahi insisted that the Kiambu health system is functional and that doctors are on duty, claims which the KMPDU denies.
In its set of demands, KMPDU demanded a public apology from the CoG and called for a full retraction of the council's earlier remarks.
KMPDU also called for an independent investigation into the reported deaths of the infants, as they also called on the President to dissolve the Kiambu County government, citing gross failure in managing its health services.
