Tenwek Vitals
361-bed Christian Mission Hospital
Hospital staff: 800+
Inpatients/year: 15,000+
Outpatients/year: 220,000+
Surgeries/year: 6,000
Births/year: approx. 3,000
Hospital-wide HMIS and radiology PACS system
Full-time missionary staff includes physicians in:
General and Orthopedic Surgery
Family Practice
Internal Medicine
Neurosurgery
Pediatrics
Pediatric Surgery
OB/GYN
Ophthalmology
Gastroenterology
The Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology (OBGYN) is a growing service at Tenwek Hospital. OBGYN physicians primarily serve high-risk obstetrics patients and other complicated OBGYN medical and surgical conditions.
The Maternity Unit, which includes a NICU/ newborn nursery, is the largest single department in the hospital. The 67-bed maternity ward is often fully occupied, with two or three women sharing a bed.
The Unit is very busy with low-risk mothers arriving for delivery who have had prenatal care at the Tenwek maternity clinics as well as women without prenatal care. Women in labor are managed by Kenyan nurse-midwives, with doctors providing constant support if complications arise. In recent years, 22-25% of over 4,000 annual deliveries were done by cesarean section.
Some common OB/GYN conditions treated at Tenwek include: intrauterine fetal demise, miscarriages, severe pre-eclampsia, advanced cervical cancers in 20-40-year-olds, illegal abortion complications, severe anemias, massive fibroids and ovarian tumors – with many of these conditions compounded by multiple co-morbidities.