Patient’s weekend in ‘hospital cell’

A scientist with a leading research institution in the Ministry of Agriculture is living in shock after he was detained at a private hospital in Nakuru.

Mr Paul Tana, a researcher with Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (Kari) and his family are yet to come to terms with what befell them after their breadwinner was held captive over unpaid bills.

Mr Tana was admitted to the hospital on Wednesday last week over a heart ailment.

The Kari employee said he was treated and his cardiologist discharged him on Friday only for the management to tell him he could not leave the hospital.

Valued freedom

“Three days down the line, I’m still held captive in this room. I should be with my family out there. I’m going through hell and I have never before valued freedom like I do now,” said Mr Tana.

The hospital claimed Kari owed it money in unpaid medical bills for employers that had allegedly accumulated since 2006.

“When I was brought into the hospital, I thought it would be a normal process since my colleagues have always been treated here and discharged on the understanding that Kari would settle the bill,” said Mr Tana.

His medical allocation per year, he said, was Sh30,000 yet his bill by Friday was Sh27,000. “I was happy when my cardiologist told me I was free to go home. All I was required to do was call my family so that someone could pick me up,” said the scientist.

Mr Tana, who is based at Kibos in Kisumu, said he called his wife and children to pick him up but was told he could not leave the hospital since his employer had not cleared the bill.

“My wife was frustrated. My nursery school child broke down crying and would not leave this room without me. But the elder brothers pulled him out,” he said.

Mr Tana said he had never seen the inside of a police cell but what he was being taken through was probably just as bad. He calls his hospital room a cell and his bed a bunker, adding that he had become a prisoner, not a patient.

“I’m no less than a prisoner. The gate watchmen has strict instructions that I should not leave,” he said.

He said the situation was getting worse since the bill was accumulating daily. The hospital continues to charge him for his stay at the rate of Sh2,200 a day, and the total was likely to surpass his limit by the time anyone came to his rescue.

Mr Tana, who has worked for the Government for 27 years, at first in the Ministry of Agriculture before being seconded to Kari in the early ‘80s, said he could not afford to pay the bill from his pocket.

On Wednesday, the researcher was taken to hospital by his wife and a friend. He had travelled from Kisumu to visit his wife, Shirley, a postgraduate student at Egerton University, Njoro.

“The services I received when I got here were great. The doctors fought to save my life and I was hopeful that I would return home a healed person soon. I didn’t know I would later be held hostage in a war involving my employer and the hospital,” he said.

Mr Tana, who was transferred from Kisii to Kisumu earlier in the year to work close to a provincial hospital, expressed his frustration at being turned beggar and prisoner, and appealed to the Government to increase the annual medical allocation for employees so Kari could settle its bills and save workers the humiliation like his.

On Sunday, the hospital matron denied that the Kari employee had been detained, and said Kari would settle the bill Monday so that its officer is released.
She, however, declined to say how much Kari owed the hospital and over what period.

Asked why Mr Tana was still at the hospital yet he was discharged on Friday, the matron said she did not know why he was still at the hospital and referred the Nation to the researcher whom she blamed for talking to the media.

Kari Kisii centre director Felister Makini — who is Mr Tana’s immediate superior — said she had heard the news that Mr Tana had been detained in hospital.

She said the bills were supposed to be settled by the Kari headquarters in Nairobi.

Dr Makini told the Nation Sunday that she would deal with the problem on Monday (today) when she resumes duty.

She said this was the first time a Kari officer was being detained in a hospital for non-payment of bills.

“I’ve never seen such a case, and I don’t really understand what went wrong. I’ll find out what happened,” said Dr Makini.