The time to make Kenyatta National Hospital great is now

Growing up in the village, it was the dream of every family with sick relatives to have them taken to Kenyatta.

My city-dweller age mates tell me the feeling was similar in the late 70s going into the 80s.

Kenyatta is how we used to refer to Kenyatta National Hospital. The city dwellers tell me they just called it KNH. Kenyatta was left for a nyama choma market a few kilometres away.

REGIONAL GIANT

KNH has grown from a national hospital to being the largest teaching and referral hospital in the country and region.

Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and South Sudan look up to KNH to save their dying when their own hospitals give up.

These countries also send their medical students to KNH for "further studies”.

Essentially, for a long time, KNH was the place to go when the only other place to be would be the grave.

With the extended geographical jurisdiction, the hospital that bears the name of Kenya’s founding father has now become the custodian of the hope of more millions of lives.

WEALTH

But so much has changed at KNH. Unfortunately, it has been for the worse!

Today, a family that has a relative seeking medical care at KNH is considered poor.

The hospital is associated with those who have fallen out of favour with the gods of wealth and money.

It is for the wretched of the earth to whom, other than the penury of monetary advantage, sickness and disease have also been visited.

HOPE

Going to, or being taken to, Kenyatta has become a likely stop over on the way to the in-house KNH mortuary or the neighbouring City Mortuary across the street.

Those with any claim to means have a wide range of private hospitals to choose from.

But this category only comprises less than 10 per cent of Kenyans.

More than 40 million others have no choice but to hope that Kenyatta gets better. For them, it is either KNH or KNH!

It is for these poor souls that every effort must be made to ensure Kenyatta reclaims its life saving and hope giving reputation.

TRAGIC DRAMA

No resource, no action and no intent should be spared in making Kenyatta great again.

Any stumbling block standing in the hospital’s recovery path, whether natural or man-made should be eliminated so as the more than 40 million people and their potential offsprings can be given a chance to live.

It is suicidal for us as a nation to continue tolerating the kind of tragic drama that we have been treated to lately, if the reports coming from the hospital are to be believed.

SEX-STARVED

That one can just walk into KNH and successfully steal a baby to sell for Sh7,000 is a joke too sick to stomach.

Something is gravely wrong when some sex-starved mortuary attendants can have the leeway of feasting on the vulnerability of newly delivered mothers at the topmost public hospital.

It is no laughing matter when a brain surgery is performed on a person who does not need it while the right candidate is wasting a few centimetres away.

The irony of the sad situation at KNH is that it is still the most attractive teaching hospital.

LABORATORY

This means the topmost medical teachers are domiciled here. And so are the topmost medical students.

KNH is the laboratory, for lack of a better word, of the University of Nairobi’s Medical School, arguably the best furnace for medical practitioners this part of the continent.

The hospital boasts of the highest concentration of the best brains in the country, the least likely place to harbour mediocrity of the nature we are being treated to.

The country must resolve to end the malaise at KNH once and for all for its own survival.

OUR PEOPLE

To achieve this life or death mission, we must put aside politics - ethnic or national.

We must put aside our appetites for tenders and jobs for our “people”. We must put aside personal vendettas.

The only motivation we need in this mission is the love for our collective self.

Let us love ourselves and make Kenyatta great again. Now.

Writer is a social, political and economic commentator. [email protected]