Governor Mbarire dismisses reports of infant deaths at Embu Level 5 Hospital amid blackout

Embu governor Cecily Mbarire has dismissed reports that five babies died at the Embu Level 5 Hospital following Friday night's nationwide power outage.

Activist Boniface Mwangi on Saturday shared online screengrabs of messages purportedly from a father who lost a baby at the facility. The father had shared what he claimed was a mobile money payment receipt for a burial permit at the hospital.

But in a social media post on Saturday, Governor Mbarire termed the report “not only misleading but non-factual.” She said only one premature baby had succumbed at the facility in the last 48 hours.

“There were 20 deliveries among them 8 C/Ss. All the babies are in absolute good health. The hospital has five standby generators which are functional and therefore the country-wide power blackout did not interfere with operations,” she wrote on Facebook.

“The public is therefore advised to ignore and disregard such misleading and alarming posts that are not backed by facts. We invite Boniface Mwangi to come or get in touch with the Department of Health to verify this information.”

Friday’s blackout lasted 12 hours and saw business services as well as operations in key state establishments such as the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) in Nairobi paralysed.

Transport Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen dismissed the Kenya Airports Authority (KAA) Managing Director Alex Gitari and General Manager Project and Engineering Services, Fred Odawo, following the incident.

In the meantime, power producer Lake Turkana Wind Power (LTWP) and power utility company Kenya Power (KPLC) have traded accusations over the blackout.

While KPLC blamed the power supplier for the mess and said it sent engineers into the wind farm to determine what caused the unusual blackout, LTWP claims in a statement that it was not producing power at the time.

LTWP in what it terms as social media reports and eventually looping in KPLC, says its system automatically went off, to avert damages to an already overcharged national grid, absolving itself of the blame.