Murang’a: Scalpel blade retrieved from woman’s abdomen 11 years after surgery

A team of medical practitioners at the Maragua Level 4 Hospital in Murang'a County have conducted a successful operation to retrieve a scalpel blade that was left in the abdomen of a 36-year-old woman when she underwent a Cesarean Section surgery 11 years ago at the Kitale District Hospital.

The doctors who conducted the 2-hour operation on Thursday afternoon were led by Dr. Kairo Kimende, the hospital’s medical superintendent.

Speaking to Citizen Digital, Dr. Kimende said the scalpel blade was found in the abdomen and was lodged between the uterus and small intestines.

He added that the blade had also blocked the uterus, thereby preventing the victim - Felistah Nafula - from conceiving.

The woman said she started experiencing complications in 2012 immediately after the C-Section through which she delivered her first-born child.

Nafula, speaking at the hospital bed a few minutes before being wheeled to the theatre, narrated the tribulations she had undergone during the 11-year period without knowing the cause of her health problems.

She explained how her husband constantly demanded to know why she could not get pregnant all those years and whether she had intentionally resolved to remain the mother of only one child.

This made her seek medical opinion from several hospitals after realising that, besides not being able to conceive, she also faced several serious complications like passing out and having a painful, swollen abdomen.

Armed with medical documents from the Kitale District Hospital and a birth notification of her daughter as proof that she was attended to at the facility, Nafula - who was accompanied by her husband Samuel Mungai - disclosed that an X-ray conducted at a hospital in Thika on advice from doctors who were treating her at another facility in Nairobi revealed that she had the scalpel blade lodged inside her.

On his part the husband, who is a mechanic, said the meagre earnings from his work all went to meeting his wife’s medical needs to an extent that they were forced to sell off their parcels of land.

The couple is now seeking government intervention to have the medics who conducted the operation prosecuted and they be compensated for the alleged negligence.