Case of missing teen reveals loop holes in Nakuru hospital's communication structure
Nakuru county referral and Teaching hospital (PGH) is the largest hospital in the South Rift region.
For the better part of three weeks, the family of James Kamawera underwent the worst moment of their life, after their son Jesse, never made it home on that fateful Sunday evening of December 10, 2023.
Jesse had left his home in Mwariki that morning and went to Chosen Generation church, but did not return home in the evening as expected.
Bright and early the next day, the family sought to look for their son. The search began by inquiring his whereabouts from his friends, then nearby police stations, public hospitals and finally the two morgues.
All these efforts bore no fruit. However, it was through the power of social media that the parents were able to get their son at Nakuru Teaching and Referral hospital, commonly referred to as PGH.
Upon finding him on January 4, 2024, the family learnt that Jesse had been involved in a hit and run the day he went missing.
The question now becomes; how is it that the parents did not find Jesse at the hospital, yet they say they checked with the facility?
According to the father, James Kamawera, he visited PGH while searching for his son only to be told that they do not have him on any of the records.
"It was after we got our son that I got to talk to one of the medical staff and they told me that if you have a missing person, you should walk from ward to ward looking for them and not depend on the records," he said.
Another concern raised by James was that although their child had been picked up by Gilgil police and taken to hospital, they still did not get any information about this from the police stations they visited.
"During our search we visited all neighbouring police stations. I am sure there must have been a way these police officers get such information through to each other, considering he was a minor and a case of hit and run," he said.
The father concludes by saying that all in all that is the past he is just happy that in the end his son is back home with him.
According to the hospital's Chief Nurse Mr. Alpharxard Kemboi, the hospital always has a given number of unknown persons at a particular time.
"In cases of unknown persons, they cannot be found in our system since there is no information that we can use to feed them into the system. They will remain unknown until the time they will be identified," he said.
He further says that in most cases the unknown persons are usually identified within the first two to three weeks.
"The hospital through the county government usually sends out announcements of unknown persons who have stayed in the hospital for more than three months through mainstream and social media," he said.
However, when Mtaa Wangu searched for the hospital's online presence, we came across a dormant Facebook page named Nakuru county referral hospital. There was also no post made of unknown persons on the county's official social media pages in the last one year.