They delivered healthy babies. A few hours later, the mothers were dead. Hospitals had no blood
Clinton Odhiambo and his wife, Mary, who died on May 11 due to excessive bleeding after giving birth.
What you need to know:
- Kenya loses 15 mothers, 92 newborns, and over 90 stillbirths daily, per the Ministry of Health.
- Globally, 14 million women experience PPH each year; 70,000 die—one mother every six minutes.
Clinton Odhiambo was 30 when he became a widower.
He accompanied his wife, Mary, to all antenatal visits. On May 10, she began vomiting. He took her to the hospital that day.
“Her blood pressure was 138. We requested admission, but the doctor sent us home,” Odhiambo says. No medication was given. “"The doctor said we should come back the following day, and that the pressure might read normal in the morning."
The next morning, they returned. Odhiambo sat with Mary through admission, tests, and a long wait for induction, delayed until midnight due to hospital protocol.
“I went home. She was induced at midnight. On May 11, she delivered around 11am. Normal delivery. A healthy baby.”
At 1.30pm, a friend visited Mary in the monitoring bed. Mary said she felt dizzy.
“By then, she had lost a lot of blood. Where were the doctor and nurses between the time she delivered and the time she started feeling dizzy? That is where the problem began," Odhiambo says.
Mary’s blood pressure read 0/45. Twice.
Odhiambo arrived around 4pm. He was informed that Mary had cervical and vaginal tears with unstoppable internal bleeding. She was rushed to theatre and her womb was contracted. Bleeding worsened. “She was moved to HDU, then ICU,” says Odhiambo.
He explains that he was denied access to the theatre. “But when she was wheeled to ICU, I held her hand. It was very cold. My wife had died, and they were managing me.”
Mary died. The baby survived.
"I have so many unanswered questions. When I was clearing with the hospital to transfer my wife's body, they made it very clear that ICU charges had to be paid in cash. When I asked why, given that I had a Social Health Authority (SHA) cover, I was told the ICU bed was not accredited by the SHA. So, they refused to pay for the service. That left me wondering; was my wife truly placed in the ICU, or were they just managing me?"
After Odhiambo insisted on SHA coverage, the bill was slashed from Sh432,000 to Sh250,000.
Elsewhere, Safari Kasiondo’s wife, also 30, was 34 weeks pregnant when she began bleeding during a routine check-up last Monday. She went straight to theatre at 6pm.
The baby was delivered. The placenta was broken. Doctors removed her womb to stem bleeding, but a scar at the placenta site kept bleeding.
“She was given six pints of blood, but still the bleeding could not stop. As the last pint transfused, the hospital ran out of blood. They were calling other hospitals.”
His wife couldn't wait two hours. She died waiting.
“My wife succumbed around midnight. Blood arrived two hours later,” Kasiondo says.
He adds: “If the hospital had blood, maybe she would not have died. There was no ambulance to transfer her. I wish they could have saved her.”
These are not isolated cases or bad luck. They are Kenya's maternal health crisis. Post-partum hemorrhage (PPH) causes up to four in 10 maternal deaths. It killed Mary and Kasiondo's wife.
Machozi Ya Mwisho Initiative in Kibera receives at least two calls weekly from men who entered hospitals with hope and left without their partners. Kenya loses 15 mothers, 92 newborns, and over 90 stillbirths daily, per the Ministry of Health.
Globally, 14 million women experience PPH each year; 70,000 die—one mother every six minutes.
At the centre of this crisis is Kenya's blood shortage. When a woman bleeds after delivery, the drugs that cause the uterus to contract can slow or stop the bleeding. But when a woman has already lost significant blood, when she arrives at a facility already in shock or bleeds faster than the drugs can contain, she needs a transfusion. And in hospitals across the country, that blood is simply not there.
Kasiondo's wife bled to death as staff searched for blood. Odhiambo's wife bled in a monitoring bed. Both delivered in facilities with trained staff and equipment. Both died from missed warning signs, delayed response, no blood, and no ambulance.
Lawrence Ochieng, founder of Machozi Ya Mwisho, has taken calls like these since 2023. His group offers free psychosocial support, legal aid, and advocacy.
"In a month, we get over eight preventable deaths. Men reach out the same day. We stabilise them, then help them seek accountability."
That accountability is hard to find.
In July 2025, the Machozi Ya Mwisho Initiative wrote to the Directorate of Family Health at the Ministry of Health asking a critical question: Were seven women who died in hospitals between 2021 and 2024 actually reported through the mandatory Maternal and Perinatal Death Surveillance and Response (MPDSR) framework, the system through which every maternal death in a Kenyan health facility is supposed to be notified, audited and investigated within defined timelines?
The Ministry replied on July 14, 2025. Dr Serem Edward, acting head of Reproductive and Child Health, confirmed that there is a notable and documented gap between deaths recorded in the general Kenya Health Information System (KHIS) reports and those uploaded to the Event Tracker, the real-time notification system.
"There is a notable gap between deaths reported in the general KHIS reports and those uploaded in the Event Tracker, often due to delays in notification and uploading," Dr Serem wrote. "According to MPDSR guidelines, deaths must be notified within 24 hours; facility deaths audited within seven days; community deaths audited within 14 days. This inconsistency highlights non-adherence to recommended timelines and potential areas for strengthening reporting practices."
Hospitals are not consistently reporting when women die in their care. The deaths are happening. The system designed to capture them, investigate them, and prevent the next one is not functioning as required. And the gap between what actually happened and what the official record shows may be significant.
“We wrote to the ministry to ask whether these hospitals reported these deaths as required. Some of them did not,” Ochieng says. “If hospitals are not reporting, there is something. These women died. Someone should be asking why. Someone should be making sure the next woman does not die the same way.”
He describes the process of seeking accountability through formal channels with an exhaustion that has clearly accumulated over the years.
“We have reached a point where we are tired of filing cases,” he says. “Because when you file at the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Council, the hospitals are comfortable. The council fights for its own. So, families file, we support them legally, for free. But justice is slow and grief is fast.”
The gap between what happened to Mary and to Kasiondo’s wife, and what was recorded, investigated, and acted on, is not just a bureaucratic failure. It is the reason the same failures repeat.
When a woman dies from postpartum hemorrhage because there was no blood in the hospital, the MPDSR system is designed to ask: Why was there no blood? Who is responsible for maintaining blood supplies at this facility? What procurement failure, what budget decision, what management choice created the gap that killed her? And what will change so that the next woman does not bleed out while someone searches for a blood type at midnight?
If the death is not reported, none of those questions is asked. The hospital moves on. The ward is cleaned. A new patient takes the bed. And the structural failure that killed one woman remains in place to kill the next.
Odhiambo’s questions still have no formal answer. He asked why, after he requested admission, they were denied even though the doctor knew his wife’s blood pressure was high. He asked where the monitoring staff were in the two hours between Mary’s delivery and the moment she told her friend that she was feeling dizzy — a moment after which the friend had to call for help. He asked why the ICU bed at the facility had not been accredited under SHA, yet the family alleged that she was admitted to the ICU and that they declined to transfer her to Kenyatta National Hospital, even after his request.
“I have a lot of questions,” he says. “The most striking, where I think the problem began, is when they released us even after I requested admission. And then the period after normal delivery. Where were they?”
His daughter is alive. She has no mother.
With maternal and newborn deaths rising, the Ministry of Health in February launched the Every Woman, Every Newborn, Everywhere campaign, designed to enhance coordination and strategic communication in addressing maternal and newborn deaths across the country.
Dr Serem, speaking at a finalisation workshop in Machakos, called for deliberate action. He described the urgent need to reduce cases of maternal and newborn deaths, stressing that appropriate messaging and public awareness are key, and that resource mobilisation at both national and county levels is critical for sustainable interventions.
“The campaign is part of Kenya's broader health agenda, contributing to Universal Health Coverage and the Sustainable Development Goals. It is a commitment that every woman should survive childbirth,” Dr Serem said.
