The case for a children’s referral hospital

Name the children’s national referral hospital in Kenya? That is a trick question because there isn’t one! While some Members of Parliament have been focusing on their colleagues’ backpacks, thermoses and tops, Homa Bay Woman Representative Gladys Wanga made a case for a children’s national referral hospital.

When it comes to referral hospitals, it is a case of whoever shouts the loudest and can afford it gets the better service. A number of times we have seen adults crying in despair while holding their medical records, seeking medical intervention.

In contrast, children cannot be heard over the adults’ voices and even when their parents act as their advocates, their voices are drowned competing for medical attention with the adults. Should the child get lucky and get that coveted appointment, they end up competing for the limited resources with adults.

Having a national referral hospital will ease the burden on children and their parents when they are the sole focus of the specialised medical professionals.

Taking speciality into account, children have their own medical conditions ranging from cleft palate to heart rhythm disorders, among others, which require early medical interventions to negate lifelong conditions that heavily impact on their quality of life.

Take scoliosis, for example, which is the abnormal curve of the spine that can reduce the space for organs to grow. Depending on the severity of the curve, the child may require surgery from a specialist and once successful, keep visiting the specialist for a few months and then grow up to have a normal healthy life.

I will leave it to your imagination what happens to the child who doesn’t get this specialist treatment.

To ease the current ongoing medical suffering of children, their own national medical referral hospital is urgently needed for complex medical conditions.

Ms Wanga recommended Pumwani Hospital, but I would prefer a hospital that solely specialises on conditions affecting children. Setting up such a hospital doesn’t have to be difficult.

If the government has the goodwill and prioritises children’s health, an existing hospital can be converted to a children’s referral hospital.

That is me being an idealist, but the realist in me awakens to the fact that we tend not to prioritise children, mismanage resources allocated to health and children’s healthcare is supplemented by external funding. It is then no surprise that the most successful and efficiently-run children’s hospitals are private.

Yet I refuse to accept that we cannot build a national children’s hospital. We built the SGR with all its surfacing faults; a specialist hospital cannot be the one that defeats us. If anything, county governments have proven that you can build hospitals will modern day equipment?

Every day children in need of treatment are unable to see specialists, their condition worsens, their quality of life is undermined and some end up losing their lives. What more needs to happen for you to make these children a priority?