Alvin Mwangi @PeopleDailyKe
For Mercy Njoroge* reporting to work every day at Mathari National Teaching and Referral Hospital is a risky affair, one that she cannot find a way around.
Her face and head bear scars she claims she sustained from attacks by patients while working at the hospital’s maximum security unit.
She is among staff at the century-old psychiatric facility who, in an exclusive interview with People Daily, revealed the horrors of working at the hospital, with most subjected to sexual harassment and violence. Apparently, female staff are the worst affected by the alleged harassment at the hospital that specialises in treatment of mental disorders.
Njoroge, a nurse who has worked at the hospital for five years, relived a traumatic incident when a male patient sexually assaulted her.
“I thought he was just agitated like most patients are most of the times. But I was shocked when he punched me in the face and removed my wig. I fainted and when I came to, I realised he had sexually assaulted me,” a tearful Njoroge narrated.
She said most of the times medics are left alone to handle about 120 patients in the hospital’s maximum security unit, which largely houses men with severe psychological conditions as well as patients brought in from prisons.
“We handle people who have killed, gangsters and rapists on our own. Most of my colleagues also get harassed but for fear of reprisal, we choose to remain silent hoping that one day someone in the government will listen to us,” said Njoroge.
Painful moments
Her woes are similar to those of another nurse, Christabel Atieno* who has undergone some of the most painful moments in her career at Mathari.
With frustration, hopelessness and disappointment clearly etched on her face, Atieno who has worked at the facility for more than eight years, narrated how one night while on duty, she was defiled by a group of young men who had just been admitted.
“It was one of those things that haunt me to date. I never thought that young men, who could easily pass for my sons could do such a disgusting thing to me,” she said, fighting back tears.
Atieno said she tried to fight her attackers off, but they were too strong for her so she simply lay on the floor as they raped her in turns.
She never reported the matter seeing no action is usually taken after similar incidents are reported to the hospital management.
“This job is not for the faint-hearted. We face these risks each and every day. Resigning is not an option because we have children to feed. We just keep bear it all in silence,” she said.
Similar tales of harassment and violence are repeated by a number of nurses.
Faith Mwende*, a psychiatry intern, said a week into her attachment at the facility, she almost called it quits.
Accompanied by her supervisor, she described how last November, a patient at the civil unit almost broke her hand for telling him to take his drugs.
“I brought him the medicine, but he told me he was not ill. When I tried to explain to him why he needed to take the drugs, he got angry and threw a wooden chair at me and almost broke my hand,” said Mwende.
Contagious diseases
Many times nurses have to attend to the troubled patients all alone in the crowded wards because even the guards fear venturing into the facilities.
The staff also expressed fears of contracting contagious diseases such as cholera and typhoid at the hospital, which has more than 800 patients relieving themselves in buckets which are emptied by the medics on duty.
But the hospital’s medical superintendent Dr Joseph Jumba dismissed the workers’ harassment claims as wild assertions that should be channelled to the Ministry of Health.
“Go through the ministry, which we work under, before coming to me,” said Dr Jumba. Attempts to get a comment from the Health Cabinet secretary Sicily Kariuki were futile as she neither respond to our calls nor replied to our text messages.
Kenya National Union of Nurses (Knun) official Stanley Nderitu assured that the union would launch investigations into the claims, noting that some of the concerns are “normal challenges that health workers go through in their daily work”.
“There are risks which come with every profession. Some of these issues you have mentioned are normal risks. I will pursue the matter and get back to you,” he told People Daily.
Chuka Igamba-Ng’ombe MP Patrick Munene, who sits on the parliamentary Committee on Health, said the House team is yet to receive any information about the plight of workers at Mathari.
He said it was unfortunate that the affected nurses had not raised the issues for fear of victimisation.
“What these nurses should do is to write an anonymous letter to the committee. Some of these things I know even the hospital CEO cannot confirm to you,” said Munene.
He also promised to raise the matter before the committee.
Plight of workers
Munene said he plans to bring a bill to Parliament to make the hospital autonomous so that it can receive funds directly from the National Treasury.
Although the plight of workers at the mental institution has not been highlighted, the predicament of the facility itself caught the eye of the Auditor General. In the audit report for last year, the auditor revealed the sickly state of the hospital that faces a chronic shortage of psychiatric nurses and is in dire financial strait.
The hospital has about 17 psychiatric nurses out of the 179 nurses countrywide who are deployed in various public hospitals. This means one nurse takes care of at least 120 patients.
The audit found mental health patients using toilets without water. At night, the patients use buckets for toilets because there were no toilets inside the wards.
The ward’s roofs had gaping holes and leaked every time it rained.
Not even efforts by the nurses to down their tools early this year could provoke the government to address their plight.
Risk allowance
In their demands, the nurses were calling for promotions, uniform allowance and risk allowance but so far none of the issues have been addressed.
“County governments promoted their nurses. No one thinks about those in the National government. It is only former President Mwai Kibaki who tried to promote some of us. Since then its only false promises,” a nurse who requested anonymity for fear of victimisation said.
One nurse said she was employed 15 years ago after graduating from college with a certificate. She was placed in job group K.
After a few years, the nurse went back to school and acquired a diploma in the hope it could earn her a promotion. Today she is still in the same job group, yet some of those she went to school with have been promoted in other hospitals.
At the ministry, the budget for training is allocated to the Department of Research and Development under programme-based budgeting. (*Names of the mentioned Mathari hospital staff have been changed to protect their identities)
