Kisumu County Hospital was on Wednesday highlighted in an exposé on The Standard newspaper over the alarming condition of its psychiatric ward, popularly known as Ward 8.
Though hospital authorities declined to comment on the issue, sources alleged that female patients at the ward occasionally fall pregnant and are delivered in the course of their stay there.
According to nurse-in-charge Maurice Odhiambo, there have been a number of reported cases of sexual assault in the ward due to the fact that it is shared by men and women.
The report noted that the ward, at the time of the investigation, had a capacity of 30 beds which are shared 50/50 for female and male patients.
[caption caption="Entrance to the Kisumu County Hospital, home to Ward 8, the largest psychiatric ward in Kenya's Western region"]
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Nurse Odhiambo added that the hospital opted to administer drugs that lower libido in the patients to curb the vice, concerned that the drugs had not been availed for some time.
"This is the measure we have taken but we have not fully achieved our objective," he stated.
Reporters managed to identify a patient who delivered her child earlier on in the month after having been admitted at Ward 8 for the entire course of her pregnancy.
Hospital records indicate that the unidentified woman was brought into the hospital in July 2017 by a good samaritan who found her after a road accident.
The woman who neither remembers her name nor recalls the circumstances that brought her to hospital claims to be a South Sudan national who was in the country to visit a friend.
The hospital denied having received the patient in July, instead, nurses claimed that she was admitted in November and had managed to hide her pregnancy from them.
Mr Odhiambo conveyed that there are plans underway to build a new ward for female patients due to the congestion in Ward 8.
[caption caption="Pregnant ladies wait outside the lobby of a hospital for a routine check up"]
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