NAIROBI — Kenya’s leading private facility, Nairobi Hospital in the country’s capital, says it is overwhelmed by COVID-19 numbers—and it is currently struggling to accommodate new patients.
Mr. Allan Pamba the hospital CEO in a statement noted that hospital had admitted 164 patients with 22 requiring intensive care admissions.
“Over this past weekend, the management faced a big challenge to stretch the hospital’s capacity to accommodate a sudden rise in cases presenting at the accident and emergency department with suspected Covid-19,” he was quoted by local media as saying, that: “the country is experiencing a surge in the number of positive symptomatic patients”.
Virus cases rose to 8,528 on Wednesday, July 8, 2020, with 169 confirmed fatalities.
With the eased restrictions, the countries cases are expected to rise exponentially.
Pamba hopes that the hospital partnership with the UN will pull through which will enable the establishment of a facility in 5-8 weeks aid in solving the low capacity problem.
This comes even as the hospital improved admissions from a low 35 percent bed occupancy in mid-April to a high 63 percent in July.
“With this rising challenge, we are hopeful that the hospital board will support the next phase of the TNH-UN Covid-19 care partnership. This will give us a 150-bed state of the art Coronavirus hospital at the old nursing school,” he said.
According to him, the facility will have a 25 ICU bed capacity with ECMO capacity and its own operating theater.
“It is a fantastic opportunity to migrate Covid-19 care completely from the Main Hospital Campus in the next eight weeks,” he said.
