So today I had to visit Mbagathi District Hospital.
My business took me past the male ward, which even in the morning cold had all its windows wide open.
You see, Mbagathi was initially designed as the Infectitious Diseases Hospital (IDH), which basically means that where TB is treated. The windows have to stay open to minimise the risk to health workers and re-infection.
Now if you don't know, 70 per cent of those infected with TB in the Kenyan setting are ALSO HIV-positive.
So passing the male ward with its windows wide open, I was shocked to see sights which I last saw in the early 1990s in KNH - skeletal bodies that were barely alive, trying to breath as froth came out of their mouths. Because of the cold, they were shaking like crazy I guess because the hospital can't afford heaters, and if they can, it would still be too expensive to run them (remember the windows have to stay open).
It is a sight that really tore at my heart. Because in advances in HAART, what I saw is not very common in high-end hospitals, and I guess that patients I saw are from what we call vitongoji za mji. Poor guys.
Still, it got me thinking. Please use that condom - and spare a prayer for those of our brothers and sisters suffering from the pain of disease. Nobody deserves such pain.
My business took me past the male ward, which even in the morning cold had all its windows wide open.
You see, Mbagathi was initially designed as the Infectitious Diseases Hospital (IDH), which basically means that where TB is treated. The windows have to stay open to minimise the risk to health workers and re-infection.
Now if you don't know, 70 per cent of those infected with TB in the Kenyan setting are ALSO HIV-positive.
So passing the male ward with its windows wide open, I was shocked to see sights which I last saw in the early 1990s in KNH - skeletal bodies that were barely alive, trying to breath as froth came out of their mouths. Because of the cold, they were shaking like crazy I guess because the hospital can't afford heaters, and if they can, it would still be too expensive to run them (remember the windows have to stay open).
It is a sight that really tore at my heart. Because in advances in HAART, what I saw is not very common in high-end hospitals, and I guess that patients I saw are from what we call vitongoji za mji. Poor guys.
Still, it got me thinking. Please use that condom - and spare a prayer for those of our brothers and sisters suffering from the pain of disease. Nobody deserves such pain.