The court awarded a compensation to Sh6 million for the case that lasted 17years A hospital scene symbolising the High Court ruling. /AI Generated Hospitals may be held financially liable for failures in patient care even where individual doctors are cleared of negligence, after the court set precedence with a new ruling.
The High Court ordered Pandya Memorial Hospital’s operator to pay Sh6.03 million to a woman whose arm was amputated following treatment as a three-and-a-half-year-old child. The ruling by Justice Jairus Ngaah places the responsibility for the failure to monitor, communicate and escalate a deteriorating patient on the hospital, rather than individual doctors, where the evidence shows that hospital systems and staff failed to respond to a critical warning sign.
“Pandya Memorial Society Registered Trustees, which operates Pandya Memorial Hospital, is hereby ordered to bear 100 per cent of the liability in the case brought by Uchi Mwidhin Mwarua over the loss of her right forearm in 2008,” the high court noted. The judgment, found that neither of the two doctors sued alongside the hospital had personally acted negligently.
Instead, the court found that the hospital failed to ensure that Mwarua received timely medical review after she developed severe pain around an intravenous cannula inserted in her right wrist. “The case therefore shifts attention from the conduct of an individual doctor during a medical procedure to the wider responsibility of hospitals to ensure that patients are properly monitored and that warning signs are acted upon,” court said.
For hospitals, the ruling highlights the potential financial consequences of gaps in nursing care, internal communication, supervision and escalation of medical emergencies. Mwarua’s ordeal began on August 7, 2008, when she was referred from the Kenya Ports Authority Clinic to Pandya Memorial Hospital with a painful and swollen left elbow.
She was admitted with a diagnosis of cellulitis and possible septic arthritis and prescribed treatment, including the antibiotic Dalacin C.