I can’t afford to treat my sick heart

Samuel Wachira works odd but taxing jobs to make ends meet. He knows these jobs are not good for his heart, but without them, he can’t support his family (wife and four daughters). Work puts some coins in his pocket, but it also keeps him in and out of hospital.

He first fell sick in 2008, following perennial chest pain and coughing that ended in heart surgery. He went back to his life and work – loading stones in lorries at a quarry and farm work – and was back in hospital in 2011 for a second surgery, after a valve installed to help his heart pump blood failed. He uses a pacemaker to control the rhythm of his heart.

Early last month, he was rushed to the local dispensary, when he fainted while working on a farm. He was immediately referred to the Nyeri County Referral Hospital, where he was admitted for a week, sharing a bed with another patient.

“I have never seen a cardiologist at the county referral hospital,” he says. Instead, he has to see one at one of the private clinics run by a consultant cardiologist, a visit that costs Sh3,000 inclusive of laboratory tests. At discharge from the county hospital, he was required to pay Sh3,100.

DID NOT HAVE MONEY

“I didn’t have the money. Working as a casual labourer earning Sh300 a day, means that when I am in hospital, I have no source of income. I have to rely on relatives, who are struggling themselves, to pay the hospital bill,” he explains.

After seeing the cardiologist, Wachira was re-admitted for four days at a cost of Sh12,000. The prescribed drugs were not available at the hospital’s pharmacy, forcing him to look for them in private chemists and hospitals. He also needed a CT scan to explain the memory loss, headaches, strokes and drooling, but this was not available at the county referral hospital, as the machine was out of service and according to Nyeri Health Executive Racheal Kamau, it would cost Sh5 million to repair it. She said repairing the machine is “so expensive, keeping in mind that it will become obsolete in a few years.”

Wachira didn’t have the luxury of waiting for the hospital to make a CT scanner available, so his family transferred him to a mission hospital for the scans at a cost of Sh8,100 for head scan and chest X-ray. The reports showed that Wachira had blood clots that were affecting his pacemaker and the doctor prescribed drugs to dissolve the clots at a cost of Sh3,000 per day. For the eight days he spent in hospital, he accrued a Sh28,000 hospital bill.

“I hadn’t been able to pay for NHIF for a year due to lack of money, so these costs were financially draining.” Wachira has since updated his NHIF card, but he notes that it does not optimally cover patients with chronic diseases like him.

“We sold everything. It is too expensive to be sick. The little we get we spend on medicine; we are left with nothing for other things. I hope healthcare will be truly free, that drugs will be available and that we will get treatment for all diseases,” he says.