Kitui district hospital: where is it and how does it operate?

The Kitui district hospital/Kitui level 5 hospital is in Kitui town. It is somewhere just above the Kitui Kunda Kindu matatu/bus terminus. There is a shortcut that pedestrians use, from Kunda Kindu, through the Kitui county health team offices, to Kitui level 5 hospital. If you are driving, you will need to branch off the highway/B7 road, turn right near the catholic cathedral, then turn right upon getting to the government offices’ road and drive for around 500 meters to get to the Kitui district hospital.

The Kitui district hospital is a big facility, with various wards, specialist clinics, imaging facilities, laboratories and a medical school (KMTC, Kitui campus) attached to it. It has general practitioners (medical officers and clinical officers), a huge army of nurses, surgeons, obstetriacians/gynecologists, orthopedicians, physiotherapists, dentists, psychiatrists and all other sorts of specialists one would expect in a referral hospital. 

For sure, the Kitui county government seems to have made a genuine effort in getting the Kitui district hospital to be properly staffed. Previously, it used to operate as a level 4 facility but was upgraded to level 5 at some point – making it a major referral facility. Which is just as well, considering the huge catchment area that is served by the hospital, I mean, at more than 32,000 square kilometers, Kitui county is bigger than some nations. It can be very unfair to tell someone who has traveled more than a hundred kilometers, say, from Endau or from Mutha that they can’t get the services they are looking for at Kitui, meaning that they have to travel further…

For sure, Kitui district hospital is a congested facility, given the huge catchment area and population it serves. Yet it also has a dedicated workforce and moving around the facility, you get the impression that everything that can be done to help the patients is being done. That said, you should expect to spend quite a bit of time waiting for your turn, especially if what you have is not exactly an emergency. It is not uncommon to queue for twenty or more minutes at the records department, half an hour or more at the outpatient department, and a further 20-40 minutes at the pharmacy. But if you are patient, you do eventually get your turn. There can also be a bit of sharing in the wards (if you are admitted as inpatient), and it helps if you can stay around to assist your patient with basic needs as the nurses are often overstretched.