25 admitted to Kiambu hospitals with Cholera

At least 25 people are admitted to two Kiambu hospitals following a cholera outbreak in Githurai, Kiamumbi and Riabai areas.

Some 22 patients are at Kiambu Level Five Hospital while three were admitted to Thika Level Five Hospital on Monday evening.

35 CASES

The patients, according to Thika Level Five medical superintendent Patrick Nyaga, include a mother and her three children.

Dr Nyaga said the mother and her two children came from Githurai 44 in Nairobi County.

The hospital, he added, is monitoring the health condition of a man who was also admitted on Monday night suffering from acute diarrhoea.

"We would want to encourage patients wherever they are not to move to many hospitals at the same time,” he said.

“At the moment there is a treatment centre in Kiambu and we encourage the people within that neighbourhood to seek treatment there," said Dr Nyaga.

Kiambu Level Five Hospital medical superintendent Jesse Ngugi on Tuesday told the Nation that they had set up an isolation ward, complete with a select team of doctors who are managing the patients.

He said they received 35 patients and more than 10 were treated and discharged.

"We began admitting cholera patients on Friday when the first one came in,” he said.

SEWAGE

“The first admission was on Friday but they keep coming in, getting treated and discharged. This morning we have received one.”

He added that the hospital would reach out to health officials in Nairobi County, where most of the patients are streaming in from, to find ways of containing the spread of the disease.

"We need to work together as a team from both counties because the patients are shared between Kiambu County and Nairobi County. If we don't work together then we might not go far," he said.

Dr Ngugi suspects that the outbreak is as a result of drinking water mixing up with raw sewage.

"Flooding could be a cause but most likely it is sewage that is mixing with drinking water and then the water is coming into contact with food, especially for people who are relying on shallow wells," said Dr Ngugi.

Some of areas hit by cholera are part of the 15 estates which have lacked tapped water for days after a pipe serving parts of Kiambu and Nairobi counties was destroyed by a road contractor.

The contractor was laying a new water pipeline from Kiambu to Embakasi along the Eastern Bypass.