A stalled Sh7m health centre, deaths and cries for help

The sloppy, rocky and bumpy 75km road from Chemolingot town in Tiaty takes us to a far-flung Kongor village in Tirioko ward, Baringo County.

There is no means of public transport, except for a few motorcycles that cannot cover the vast remote area, with locals forced to walk for several kilometers to access social amenities.

Apart from the rugged terrain, there is also another challenge- sweltering heat and poor mobile network that has hampered access to services in the locality.

This is an area where Chepukugho Natim and other residents lost dozens of children and women following an upsurge of malaria in 2017 and 2019 due to lack of a health facility.

At the time, Natim lost her 10-year-old son after walking for more than 10km under the scorching sun from Chesawach village to a private facility in Kaghat, which did not have drugs owing to the high number of patients that had flocked it earlier. Sadly, her son, breathed his last as she waited for help from the Kenya Red Cross team, which was expected in the area that particular day.

Residents say some patients who were being taken to Chemolingot Sub-county Hospital in Tiaty and Lomut in West Pokot died on the way due to dehydration owing to the long distance.

The Nation has established that there is no functional public health facility in the vast Akoret Division, save for Ng’oron dispensary, hundreds of kilometres away, that most of the times also faces an acute shortage of drugs and cannot handle patients who need admission.

During a tour to the area last week, it also emerged that more than six people, among them expectant women and children, lost their lives a month ago due to a malaria outbreak.

Some died at home after taking herbal medicine while others, including a minor, died while being rushed to Chemolingot Sub-county Hospital.

On September 4, the county government confirmed that three people; two females aged 40 and 18 years old, and a four-year-old child, died of malaria.

Following the malaria deaths in 2017, the devolved government promised to construct a dispensary in the locality. 

A year later, the county government commissioned the construction of a Sh7million dispensary in Kongor village within Akoret Divion. However, the project stalled two years later.

The structure is at its lintel stage, with some bent steel rods left hanging; posing a security risk to locals.

The dispensary was supposed to serve Gulel, Atirir, Chesawach, Kongor, Tayier, Kaghat, Chesotim, Lokis,Kapau, Kreze, Ng’aina and Akoret villages.

Akoriye Kumatile, a resident, lamented that they have now been forced to walk to Lomut and Sigor in the neighbouring West Pokot County in search of the elusive health services.

 “We have been left on our own. How can you explain a situation where there is no single operational facility in an entire division? We have lost many children over the years due to treatable diseases, which could have been managed if we had a facility,” said Mr Kumatile.

The residents in the far-flung area, the Nation learnt, rely on outreach missions sponsored by World Vision, Red Cross and religious organisations. But the residents said the outreach programmes stopped almost three years ago.

Hundreds of children in the remote villages in Tiaty Sub-county are also prone to infections, with several under-fives years dying of curable diseases due to lowered immunity levels occasioned by lack of immunisation.

A spot check by the Nation in several villages revealed that several children missed out on immunisation while others did not receive all vaccines as per the national immunisation schedule due to scarcity of health facilities, only relying on outreach missions that stopped a few years ago.

Lodengo Loseron, a local, wondered why it has taken more than six years to complete the dispensary yet villagers continue losing their lives due to lack of health services.

“One is usually forced to incur more than Sh20,000 to transport a patient using an ambulance to Chemolingot or Sigor and Ortum in West Pokot, about 100km away. Those who cannot afford resign to their fate because even a motorcycle charges more than Sh10,000.

“The situation has been worsened by the poor road network. Several people have died on their way to hospital because it takes more than five hours to reach the destination owing to the rugged terrain,” said Mr Loseron.

“If the devolved unit has our interests at heart, it should complete this project. The county government cannot continue claiming that the contractor did not have the capacity while locals continue to die. We recently lost more than six people in this locality due to an outbreak of malaria,” he added.

Expectant women, he said, seek services from traditional birth attendants, which can be risky in case of birth complications.

Tirioko ward administrator Sammy Samali said children below the age of five are at risk of contracting diseases due to lack of immunisation services.

“We also pray that expectant mothers do not get complications because we will be forced to transport them using donkeys. Sometimes some succumb on the way before reaching the hospital,” said Mr Samali.

Adjacent to the stalled facility is a mobile truck that was brought to the locality to respond to malaria cases in 2019. Residents say the truck was abandoned by the county government because it could not be towed back due to the poor road network.

Tirioko ward MCA Sam Lourien said his ward has only one health facility. “This region is still behind in terms of development, with the health sector being the worst hit. People here are still dying of treatable diseases like malaria because of lack of facilities,” said Mr Lourien.

He said the Sh7 million Kongor dispensary stalled because of lack of capacity by the contractor, who did a shoddy work and left the site for good.

“I have been to the county’s Health Department urging them to terminate the contractor’s contract. How long would it take a department to terminate the contract of an inefficient contractor who left after he failed to comply with the terms and conditions he signed? How long will it take them to source for another contractor? I don’t know if it is a matter of incompetency by the Health department or it has no good will for the people of Tirioko,” lamented the MCA.

The ward rep said most patients in the area have been forced to rely on herbs.

“Those who take their patients to the sub-county hospital in Chemolingot do not have access to vital services like blood transfusion. Many people have died on the way to hospital due to the long distance, with the recent incident being a young girl who died on the way while being rushed to hospital using a motorcycle. It is a sad state of affairs here,” he added.

The stalled health facility is among 45 new ones in Baringo County that have been constructed since the advent of devolution in 2013 to serve locals in the far-flung villages.

The county government spent millions of shillings in the construction of the health facilities in the six sub-counties between 2013 and 2017, with most of them fully complete but yet to serve the intended purpose due to perennial shortage of health workers.

Other facilities that were built during the advent of devolution and are fully complete but not operational are Korelach, Sugut, Ng’aina, Chewara, Cheptaran,Mbechot, Sagasagik,Kokwototo,Orus, Loyeya, Kadokoi,Donge, Cheptaran,Nasur,Akoreyan,Seretion,Maregut,Kipkaren, Terik,Longewan, Katikit, Root, Kimugul, Ngeiwan and  Kiptaiwa.

The county’s Health Executive Solomon Sirma recently told the Nation that the construction of the facilities was not well informed, taking into consideration that the devolved unit is grappling with a shortage of staff in the operational health facilities, let alone those needed to be deployed in the newly-built structures.

According to Dr Sirma, the county will incur millions of shillings in maintenance, staffing and equipping of the facilities, an amount that is not available at the moment.

“We will incur more than Sh10 million to run a single facility annually. Where will we get such a huge amount of money from when we already have a myriad of challenges in the sector? To be sincere, the construction of the facilities was not well informed and we may not be utilising them any time soon. In the meantime, we will be forced to rely on outreaches to reach locals in the affected areas,” said Dr Sirma.

Baringo Governor Benjamin Cheboi recently urged locals to take public participation seriously, noting that it was the only way they would identify areas of priority to avoid constructing structures that end up being white elephants.

“We are asking locals to identify priority areas that are going to generate employment and wealth. Let us not build structures just for the sake of it. Let us focus on a few flagship projects that are of value, those that can increase production of food to avoid overreliance on food aid and also uplift locals’ living standards,” said Governor Cheboi.

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