Brave nurse who saved new mothers after gang struck

She took a step of faith and pain to serve expectant mothers.

Ms Alice Wanjiru, a nurse, had just delivered at Maragua District Hospital but she did not get time to bond with her daughter.

On April 7, last year, Ms Wanjiru had just delivered at the hospital when gangsters struck.

As the thieves robbed some patients of their mobile phones and money, others were crying out in labour pain as they neared delivery.

There were no nurses on duty in sight. “The nurses had been tied and locked up in one of the rooms,” she recalls.

For a second, Ms Wanjiru was in a trance but the call of duty and maternal instincts to serve the mothers in labour prompted her to act.

Perhaps Chinua Achebe’s words in Things Fall Apart “A toad does not run in the daytime for nothing” explains Ms Wanjiru actions.

“Although in pain, I dragged myself to them as they desperately needed help. I started helping them deliver one by one,” she narrates.

Like a miracle

She adds: “It seemed like a miracle as I did not want to know whether there were gangsters around or whether I was in pain. There was even no time to prepare myself,” she explains.

And for her courage, she was this week honoured as the winner of the Jubilee Insurance Samaritan Award (Jisa) at Hilton Hotel in Nairobi for risking her life to help fellow women deliver under extraordinary circumstances.

The Jisa award seeks to reward outstanding and selfless deeds carried out by individuals and encourages Kenyans to be mindful of the welfare of the less fortunate.

She had to keep aside her own newborn child to attend to the call of duty.

Thanks to her heroic efforts, two women delivered boys and another a girl.

“I did not mind the commotion but the pain of the mothers. I also forgot that I was in pain and and saw only the mothers who needed urgent attention,” says Ms Wanjiru, who has been a nurse at the hospital for 11 years.

She later went into the room where the other nurses had been locked up and untied them.

While presenting her with the award, Jubilee Insurance-Kenya chief executive Patrick Tumbo commended Ms Wanjiru’s selflessness. “It is not every day that we see such extraordinary concern for others to a point of risking one’s life,” said Mr Tumbo. “Jubilee appreciates Ms Wanjiru and by awarding her we hope this will inspire the same values of courage and compassion in others.”

Great dedication

“Ms Wanjiru makes us stop to think about our dedication to other human beings,” said Ms Catherine Gicheru, a member of the Jisa panel of judges. “She could barely move, everybody else feared for their lives, she could have got hurt, and thank God she was not because today we have a hero to celebrate and inspire others.”

She was picked by a panel of judges, which comprise six high ranking media practitioners.