At Meru Hospital, a backup generator has not worked for eight years. The hospital uses the same beds that came with the facility 40 years ago. Over at Muthare Hospital in Nairobi, rats race among piles of human feces in tiny rooms that hold patients in the nation's only public psychiatric facility. The hospital, which has more than 800 patients, frequently has no electricity. Grass stands two feet high.
Patients sleep on thin mats laid on the concrete floor.
Small birds perch on rusted barbed wire, watching over mountains of garbage on the hospital's grounds. Perhaps Meru Hospital's most overworked staff are those in the children's ward, where more than 100 babies and youngsters come in daily, often to find that the staff cannot treat their ailments. Each of the ward's beds holds three or four mothers, who sit rocking the sobbing children. In the evening, mothers lay their dazed, exhausted children on the beds and sleep on the floor or stand vigil over them throughout the night. One sign of hope appears to be Lucy, a lean, affectionate girl.