Health team promises Kenyan help

Meru District Hospital suffers from massive overcrowding

A struggling hospital in Kenya has been promised support from a group of NHS Tayside staff for at least the next five years, after an eye-opening trip.

Local health professionals recently visited Meru, which suffers extreme poverty and low life expectancy.

They saw an orphan with Cerebral Palsy who had been in a cot for 14 years and seven babies sharing one incubator.

The NHS staff are raising money to provide vital equipment and develop an Accident and Emergency department.

In Meru, the average life expectancy is 43 for men and 46 for women.

A hospital visit can cost a patient a quarter of a week's wage.

Basic essentials

The team of nine NHS Tayside staff, plus three others, has already raised about £12,000 for computers and equipment such as CT scanners.

However, Beth McDowall, from Perth Royal Infirmary, said patients lacked even the basic essentials, as illustrated by an e-mail she got from the Meru District Hospital director.

She said: "We'd produced this massive report for them to say 'this is where you need to make improvements', and he got back to me to say 'thanks for your report, what we'd really like is some chickens to be able to give the patients an egg a day'.

"It's hugely overcrowded and nobody wants to go home because they're getting a meal there.

"We saw the hospital kitchens and they were fantastic, but just this massive fire with a huge pot of cabbage on to try to feed all the in-patients."