A spike of deaths from Pneumonia from 57 in 2018 to 243 by the end of 2019 in Laikipia County has highlighted a major cause for concern.
The Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) on Thursday, August 20, released a report titled Laikipia County Statistical Abstract, which detailed the various causes of death over the last 3 years.
This was in sync with data from the National Registry of Diseases shared on March 31, 2020, which revealed there had been 137,667 cases of pneumonia from January to early February 2020, which then jumped to 195,504 cases between at the end of March.
The Respiratory Society of Kenya, earlier on in the year, warned that any case of pneumonia should be treated as a suspected Covid-19 case until proven to be pneumonia.
However, the latest report published by KNBS shows data collected before the first Covid-19 case was recorded in Kenya, raising even further questions.
No explanation was given in the report behind the sharp rise in pneumonia deaths.
However, doctors have publicly come out and confessed to finding it difficult to differentiate between Covid-19 and pneumonia as the two share similar symptoms.
Of the 243 pneumonia deaths in Laikipia, the largest number (75) fell in the 55-74 age bracket with 64 of them being male and 11 female.
Over the same period, deaths from cancer went from just 46 to 190.
Hypertension was listed as the 3rd leading cause of death in the County with 176 people having lost their lives to the condition in 2019.
As a response to the Presidential directives for each county to have at least 300 hospital beds as preparation for the surge in Covid-19 cases, the county government of Laikipia has engaged Vocational Training Centres (VTCs) to make the vital commodities.
Nyahuru, Nanyuki and Marmanet VTCs have since supplied high-quality special hospital beds that would have otherwise cost the government much of the taxpayers money, had they been imported as was the case before.
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