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{
    "id": 1567445,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1567445/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 472,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Oketch Gicheru",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I am drawn to the attention of this Petition by virtue of it not being a random Petition. It was sent to this House by one Ms. Mercy Jepchirchir, who reported to the Senate of Kenya on this issue on 10th July, 2024. That was last year. First, I want to thank her because without her, we would not have been able to know what happened to this promising soul of Ms. Annita, who unfortunately lost her life in the course of getting attention at the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital (MTRH). What is even wanting that I would like to talk about today, is how many people and cases are unreported. How many deaths could we be having in our different medical facilities that are not reported? I had the advantage of studying in the United States of America (USA). In the USA, every year, on average, about 600,000 cases of deaths are reported in hospitals. The USA is one of the countries that has made strides in medical advancement. However, at any given time, you will find that the third-largest cause of death in the USA is always medical errors. Those medical errors in a world-leading economy have become a public health problem. When this petition was brought to us, I wondered, if in the USA we can end up having this issue of medical errors in facilities of medical attention becoming a third- leading cause of death, what about in our borders where, if it were not for somebody like Ms. Mercy Cherono bringing this to the attention of the Senate? I will not belabour the point. I strongly believe that even though the recommendations here have called for compensation of Ms. Jepkorir’s family, the compensation cannot be enough for this family. Compensation cannot be enough to bring back this life that was very important and promising. However, more can be done in terms of ensuring that there is transparency and accountability in terms of being able to arrest the number of deaths that could be happening in our medical facilities without our watch and knowledge as lawmakers and as citizens of this country. That is why I wanted to spend a little bit of time on this. I hope that this Committee will hold the MTRH to account. I hope that they will not just be dealing with this one case that might easily pass as an isolated case after our debates have subsided and we have adopted this Report. The investigations that were done professionally here will have tried to hold MTRH to account. The question that we would be asking is: How can we make sure that we have a more comprehensive risk analysis of what is going on within our borders with regards to this kind of medical errors and gross negligence that happens in our medical institutions? I wish that this Report could have forced the institution in question, the MTRH, to further provide the different medical errors and medical negligence cases that might have occurred in the past and make sure that we, as a country, juxtapose this with the kind of impact it might have had in this hospital in terms of patient care. Whatever happened at the MTRH should be a case study for any other hospital in the country, not only referral hospitals and Level 6 hospitals, but even the lower cadre hospitals. They should be able to glean some morals, if there is any moral to glean in the first place. Secondly, what happened that got the attention of the Senate on this one case should be an issue that we must look at in terms of the loss we have in this country. We can get from this Report and figure out how we arrest reporting systems by clinical"
}