As Penina Zawadi was wheeled to the operating room for a cesarean section, she gave her mother her jewelry for safekeeping, along with a reassuring word: She would have a safe delivery.
An hour later, a nurse handed Esther Bendera her newborn grandson. But her daughter did not return. Her family said the 29-year-old Zawadi bled heavily after birth and was sent to another hospital to have her uterus removed, a last-ditch measure. She spent several days in intensive care before dying on June 23.
“She was bleeding so much, you would think it was water gushing out,” Bendera recalled. “After the second surgery, she never opened her eyes again.”
She said Zawadi, who had been healthy in pregnancy, spent four hours bleeding at Malindi Hospital awaiting a referral to the larger facility in coastal Kenya, Kilifi County Referral Hospital, an hour’s drive on a potholed road.
AP
