The sick joke of Jubilee’s free maternity care

Benson Murage, the Nairobi father who audaciously attempted to smuggle his infant out of Kenyatta National Hospital’s maternity ward last week to avoid paying a Sh56,000 bill, has become something of a folk hero.

Although Mr Murage pleaded guilty to the offence and was handed a non-custodial sentence by a magistrate’s court, his crime has elicited a rare show of public approval on social media.

Hours to his sentencing on Tuesday, there was no shortage of people volunteering to pick the hospital bill or pay the court fine, with publicity-hungry politicians at the front of the queue.

A charitable administration police officer reportedly arrived with cash at the courts to find the bill had been settled, but he still found it in his heart to donate the entire amount to the family.

PUBLICITY

Of course, not everyone jumped onto the bandwagon celebrating Kenya’s newly minted ‘good thief’.

A young woman, who identifies herself as a law student on her Twitter profile, decided to throw a spanner in the works with sensational comments suggesting that poor people like Mr Murage should simply avoid having babies or taking up societal roles they are ill-prepared for such as that of raising children.

In all likelihood, the woman only meant to try to seek attention by weighing in with a contrarian view on a topic that appeared popular with the vibrant Kenyans on Twitter (KOT) community.

But in a country where so many bad things are associated with inequality, sick jokes about other people’s poverty and discrimination on the basis of social class are considered repugnant.

At worst, they might even be interpreted as advocating policies similar to the eugenics of Nazi Germany in the 21st Century.

HEALTHCARE

On a more serious note, the law student and her ilk seem to completely miss or deliberately ignore the point of Mr Murage’s story.

The continued detention of patients in public hospitals highlights serious policy failures and corruption in healthcare.

Under President Uhuru Kenyatta’s administration, maternity services in public health facilities have been officially free of charge since 2013.

The Treasury has regularly announced budgetary allocations to the free maternity programme.

Mr Murage, 22, and his wife probably woke up to vote back Mr Kenyatta for a second term in office on account of such campaign promises.

But it is not only the poor who are crying about high costs and graft in healthcare.

COST

Environment activist Phyllis Omido last week staged a dramatic sit-in at Mombasa’s Pandya Memorial Hospital to protest alleged inflated maternity costs by the private hospital popular with the middle class in the Coast counties.

For a two-day stay, Ms Omido was reportedly slapped with a Sh293,336 bill, out of which Sh186,000 was the fee for the physician who performed a C-section operation on her.

Her public standoff with the hospital shows that one can never be quite prepared for the shock of dodgy hospital bills in Kenya regardless of social class.

[email protected]