The morning rounds at Modogashe hospital in Lagdera do not take long. Most of the rooms opening on to its narrow hallway are empty. “We don’t get that many patients these days,” says Saveria Njoki, the head of nursing. Only three patients were on the ward that day, and none would be staying very long.
According to a local official, patient numbers in Lagdera – a district in Garissa County, in the east of Kenya – have dropped from nearly 12,000 in 2019 to just over 8,000 last year, as people move away in search of water.
