A Kenyan friend of ours called yesterday to say that his wife had died after giving birth to a healthy baby boy in a cesarean section. Apparently she was recovering fine several hours after the birth but then stopped breathing _ something to do with the anesthesia she had been given _ and the nurses didn't notice. She fell into a coma, was put on a breathing machine, and then she died a few days later.
This seems to me to be the biggest failing of governance -- and western NGOs -- in places like Kenya. For all the government's talk, it is too corrupt or self-interested to provide even the most basic health care to its citizens. For all their grand promises about reducing poverty and ensuring housing for all, aid groups do not focus on simple ways to ease suffering. You see the effects of bad governance everywhere _ people crippled by easily prevented childhood diseases, maimed by botched surgeries, and in the worst cases, killed by the negligence of doctors and nurses.
In other recent events, the newspapers have been filled with stories about Kenya's politicians 1. demanding higher salaries if they are going to adhere to public demand that they start paying taxes and 2. forming political alliances ahead of presidential elections set for 2012. It is awfully easy to get snippy about these things, but cripes! It's only 2009!
