Inside the heartbreaking story of a single mother’s fight for her daughter’s life
By Elias Kiplimo, December 2, 2025For over five years, Mama Caroline Barkoiyet from Tinoni Village in the Keiyo South Constituency, Elgeyo Marakwet County, has been moving from one hospital to another seeking treatment for her 7-year-old daughter.
Her daughter suffers from a heart and lung disease and currently depends solely on an oxygen machine.
In an interview with K24 digital from the Iten County Referral Hospital, which has been her home for the past six months, Barkoiyet narrates the agony she is going through after her siblings, relatives, and friends abandoned her as she cares for her daughter.
What adds even more pain is that the child’s father fled, leaving her alone to fight and ensure her child receives the best treatment. To date, he has never visited them in the hospital or offered any support.
“My husband left me, he didn’t care for all those five years, and I haven’t seen anyone from his family visit me. I even struggle to get soap and other needs,” she says.
Caroline continues to explain that she took her to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital (MTRH) in 2020, where a doctor informed her that her daughter was suffering from a heart and lung disease.
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They stayed at that hospital for one year and two months before being transferred to a hospital closer to home, Kamwosor Hospital.
In June 2025, the mother brought her daughter to Iten County Referral Hospital, a facility that has been their residence for six months now.
Despite her daughter’s condition improving at the hospital, the mother is seeking assistance to get an oxygen machine so that she can be discharged.
“The doctors at Moi told me he doesn’t need to get an infection in the hospital. Getting that oxygen machine will help him at home,” she told K24 Digital.
Health ordeal
Due to the challenge of caring for her daughter in the hospital constantly, Caroline took her other child to a children’s home in Eldoret town. She has not seen this child, and neither has the father, for five years.
The mother indicates that the management of the children’s home has asked her to take her son back home, stating that their goal is only to help totally orphaned children and not children with a single parent/partially orphaned.
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However, the mother is hopeful that if she gets the oxygen machine for her child, she will go and bring her other child home from the children’s home, and she will raise both her children well.
“The other child is still at Kapsoiya children’s home. The problem of the machine overwhelmed me. If I had the machine, I would have already brought him so we could all stay together,” Barkoiyet explains.
She is now appealing to well-wishers to help her pay the electricity bill at her home to aid the child when using the machine, adding that she has spent all the money she had while at the hospital and has not been involved in any economic activity at home for five years.
Appeal for support
“I just ask that I get the machine and this electricity matter so I can go and look after my son,” she appealed.
On her part, the social worker at the Iten County Referral Hospital, Ann Chepkok, said it has been a challenge for the hospital management to discharge the mother and her daughter because she does not have an oxygen cylinder or concentrator at home.
The officer noted that they have been counselling and advising her because the hospital has been looking for a suitable way to help her for a long time.
“It will be a significant step if the mother gets that machine; it will help her return home and reunite with her child, who is at the children’s home,” Chepkok remarks.