On September 1, 2024, Janet Chetambe, nine months pregnant, travelled from Nairobi to Eldoret to visit her sister, but her plans changed when she unexpectedly went into labour on September 11, 2024. She delivered her daughter at Uasin Gishu County Hospital, and mother and child were healthy and were discharged on September 12, 2024.
Five days after she took her baby home, Janet began to notice something unusual. Her baby’s eyes were turning yellow. Concerned, she reached out to a cousin with a medical background, who suggested it could be jaundice, a common condition in newborns caused by a buildup of bilirubin due to an immature liver. He advised her to expose the baby to early-morning sunlight, a method often recommended to help break down excess bilirubin. Trusting this advice, Janet wrapped her daughter to keep her warm and took her out to bask.
After a while, she noticed Baby Angel had started shivering and quickly rushed her back inside. Janet monitored her condition, but the shivering persisted and showed no signs of improving. With her baby just five days old, she decided to seek urgent medical care.
After a series of injections, Janet now questions, Baby Angel developed severe complications that ultimately led to the amputation of her legs. Today, the family is still searching for answers. But their efforts have been met with silence, with the hospital yet to release the medical records they believe could explain what really happened.
This story is told through Janet’s eyes, as she recounts the ordeal her newborn endured and how a hospital visit meant to save her child left her with life-altering injuries that the family will carry for years to come. To understand what unfolded inside those hospital walls, in the hands meant to heal, you have to watch Janet’s story here.
Sadly, Baby Angel’s story is not an isolated case. It is part of a broader series by Africa Uncensored examining troubling experiences within Kenya’s health facilities. Because in Kenya today, the line between healing and heartbreak can be dangerously thin. Patients walk into hospitals trusting in a duty of care, only to find themselves confronting systems where questions of negligence emerge, and accountability often feels just out of reach.
Fatal Detour: The Shadowy “Token” System
Our investigation into a system that failed Baby Vicram uncovered a sinister “commission system” within our emergency services. We found evidence of EMTs and ambulance drivers diverting vulnerable patients to specific private facilities in exchange for tokens or kickbacks. For Vicram’s family, this meant being diverted away from the specialized care they were promised, ending in an illegal detention, a bill of millions of shillings, and a loss that can never be replaced. Watch Baby Vicram’s story here.
Locked Out
A mother goes into labour in the dead of night, but the hospital gate remains shut. Another delivers her baby on a cold veranda, exposed and alone. Families speak of midnight drives to health facilities, only to lose their loved ones in the back seats of cars while medics were on strike. These are the testimonies emerging from Embu County.
More than a decade after the devolution of healthcare under Kenya’s 2010 Constitution, a reform meant to bring quality services closer to the people, and amid the government’s push for Universal Health Care (UHC), the expectation was clear: that no Kenyan would be denied treatment because of cost or access. In Embu, however, that promise appears to be slipping further out of reach.
Watch Locked Out here.
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