Lessons from the grave: The brutal truth about Kenya’s neglected newborn and maternal care
Charlene Ruto (right) and Deputy President Kithure Kindiki at the Homa Bay exhibition stand during the official closing ceremony of the Devolution Conference at Homa Bay High School on August 15, 2025.
What you need to know:
- A teenage survivor’s harrowing account exposes Kenya’s maternal health crisis and demands urgent government accountability today.
- Stacey’s powerful testimony forces Kenya to confront systemic neglect endangering women, babies, and our future generations.
The past fortnight has been awash with striking headlines about the recently concluded 2025 Devolution Conference. The sweltering Homa Bay County teemed with crowds by day as thousands flocked to the annual fair, where all 47 counties showcased their unique strengths.
While the main plenary hall served largely as a political stage – a platform for lofty declarations of progress and growth, hollow promises, and statistics that often defied logic – the real essence of the conference lay elsewhere. The true work began only when the grand spectacle quietened down and the breakaway sessions commenced.
It was in these sessions that the spirit of the conference came alive. This was the content deserving of live broadcast. Here, the real issues affecting people like Adhiambo were discussed, and practical solutions proposed by those who truly understood the pain points. In this space, Adhiambo could address her leaders candidly, without the veneer of political correctness demanded in the main tent.
The conversations that unfolded in Breakaway Tent Four on Wednesday, August 14, were nothing short of transformative – raw, honest, soul-baring dialogues exposing how, as a nation, we have persistently failed to take the lives of our newborns, girls and women seriously. We continue to condemn them to early graves, atop which we dance with careless abandon.
Fittingly titled “Lessons from the Grave through County MPDSR: Call to Action for Ending Preventable Maternal and Newborn Deaths by Upscaling Quality Maternal Care”, the session was convened by the Inter-County Maternal and Perinatal Death Surveillance and Response (MPDSR) initiative, co-sponsored by the Lwala Community Alliance and the Council of Governors.
Having spent two decades of my professional life in maternity wards, I have had a front-row seat to the grim realities. I have seen women in labour for days, arriving at hospital when the unborn child inside them is not only long dead but decomposing; others narrowly escape the hands of quacks, only to arrive carrying the decapitated body of their unborn child in a plastic bag, while the head remains trapped in the womb.
With such numbing experiences, you would expect me to have grown stoic. Yet, listening to Stacey take the podium and recount how she stared death in the face shook me to the core.
Introduced by the session moderator as a Gen Z voice offering her generation’s perspective, I could not anticipate the angle her story would take. Her style and demeanour were unapologetically Gen Z – a group we often dismiss as carefree. But the moment she began speaking, her words landed like a punch to the gut.
This teenage girl – in my eyes still a child – had lived decades beyond her years. Barely two weeks removed from her harrowing ordeal, she stood before us, courage blazing through tears on her youthful face, recounting her trauma with the heart of a lion. There was not a single dry eye in that packed tent.
Stacey’s delivery was unmatched. As maternal and newborn health advocates, we are trained to drape our messages in data – statistics presented with evidential rigour. Sadly, our audience has grown saturated, immune to numbers, having perfected the art of tuning out.
In just 15 minutes, Stacey stripped away our armour. She put a face to the 366 mothers out of every 100,000 who die annually while giving birth in Kenya. That statistic came alive in the form of a barely adult girl who had almost perished in our failing health system. These 366 women are of all ages, shapes and sizes – including those who should be spending their youth gossiping about the latest film or hairstyle on campus lawns.
In those few minutes, Stacey held up a mirror to our county health systems – the unsupported midwives, the non-existent referral structures, the infamous “third delay” where care is agreed upon but takes far too long to implement, leading to needless deaths. The chronic understaffing and under-resourcing of our facilities could not have been more apparent.
Dysfunctional ambulance
The most harrowing part of Stacey’s account was learning that after being placed in an ambulance for referral to a surgical facility, the vehicle never made it beyond the gate because of a lack of fuel. Imagine being in prolonged labour, wracked with excruciating contractions, knowing they will only stop once you are on an operating table – and then being forced to pause your pain to find Sh1,000 to fuel your own transfer.
And still, her ordeal did not end there. Upon arrival at the referral hospital, care was not immediate. She endured a torturous seven-hour wait, her body wracked with contractions, before finally being wheeled into theatre. By then, her womb was so exhausted it failed to contract, leaving her bleeding uncontrollably – the perfect storm of systemic failure. Her only chance of survival was to let go of her womb.
This is not merely Homa Bay’s story; it is the reality across all 47 counties. It is the face of a neglected health system that disregards women, girls, and the children they bring into the world.
Stacey’s message was unambiguous: she holds her government accountable for what happened to her – not the kind midwives who stood by her, not the overwhelmed driver forced to fetch fuel on a boda boda, not the overworked doctors who fought to save her life. She places responsibility squarely where it belongs – at the doorstep of government.
Stacey and her generation of 18–25-year-olds have consistently reminded us of their hunger for good governance. They constitute 14 per cent of the population – a voting bloc of 7.8 million, larger than the margin that delivered our last president. They cannot be wished away. They may be young, but their greatest strength lies in their unfiltered clarity. They see through our half-hearted attempts to strengthen the health system for what they are – dismal.
The gynaecologists and neonatologists took the stage after Stacey affirmed her testimony in every respect. They, too, suffer post-traumatic stress from these needless deaths. None of them signed up to preside over death. They are calling for deep, committed systemic reform – because after all Stacey has endured, it is impossible to expect anything resembling justice without it.
Dr Nelly Bosire is a practicing obstetrician/gynaecologist, with special interests in health policy and advocacy.
