Eighteen Hours

I know I should be outraged, in addition to being sad, that a road accident victim is being kept alive by machines because, perhaps, he was confined for eighteen hours in an ambulance while waiting for one of the twenty one beds in Kenyatta National Hospital's Intensive Care Unit to become available for him. His ambulance had been to two other private hospitals which couldn't admit him because their ICUs were full up too. I should be outraged. Instead, I am sad.

I am sad because it doesn't seem to matter anymore, these tragedies, that is. It has been a hard year and the elected classes are about to make it harder. Did you hear of the joke that the National Assembly is about to play on us? It will set up a society, at the taxpayers' expense, to tend to the post-parliamentary life of waheshimiwa. One of the boons in this sweet deal is a $1,000 stipend so that they don't lose the respect these waheshimiwa engendered when they trolled the hallowed halls of Parliament.

How can Kenyans die because the biggest referral hospital in Eastern Africa can't expand its ICU facilities while the body charged with holding the national Executive to account for such things is busy lining its members' pockets as if money is going out of fashion? There should be outrage about this state of affairs; it is the sadness that remains once the outrage has abated and the mind has been becalmed.

We make choices every day. We prioritise things every day. We pretend to value human life, but we value mammon more, and this is starkly apparent in the health sector. Private hospitals will not admit you unless there is a cash deposit. All hospitals will hold you hostage until the final shilling is paid. If you happen to die while undergoing treatment, the doctors will rally around each other and deny your loved ones justice - or information. You don't even have to be a doctor to enjoy the benefits of this big white line; it took the combined outrage of people on TV and on the radio that a rapist masquerading as a gynaecologist was arrested and charged in court.

The family of the road accident victim now faces an agonising choice: when to allow the doctors to switch off the life support equipment. I do not know if the eighteen hours he spent in the ambulance was critical to his care or recovery; I don't think it was helpful. He will die. We will be outraged. Some of will get over it, but the sadness will always be there, how callous we are about life while the people we choose to do something about it live like they are in the last years of Pompeii.