Patients wait months for routine surgery.
Beds are filled with people abandoned by relatives. The stench of filth and urine chokes the air. The hospital's mortuary, next to the dining hall, has had no refrigeration for a year. This government hospital, among Kenya's worst, is far from an anomaly in sub-Saharan Africa, where health facilities often are crippled by too little money and too many patients, stuffed into crumbling structures that lack basic supplies and medicines. The dire state of these hospitals was crystallized last month when the lethal Ebola virus struck Kikwit, Zaire, eventually killing more than 150 people in several towns.