Mathari hospital in deplorable state

Mathari hospital in deplorable state

Mathari Hospital, Kenya’s only referral facility for psychiatric patients is in a deplorable state.

Members of the National Assembly’s Health Committee were shocked to find it has six times the number of patients it was built to accommodate and lacks proper drugs and specialists to deal with patients.

The hospital is the only referral hospital offering specialised psychiatric services and drug rehabilitation in the country.

Furthermore, the facility examines and treats mentally ill law offenders referred by the courts and, despite a bed capacity of 700, holds nearly six times the number of patients at 4,188.

Despite the big number of patients the facility handles, it only has 483 members of staff.

“We are in acute shortage of specialists psychiatrists, psychiatric nurses, clinical psychologists and occupational therapists,” said a matron at the facility.

Buildings are dilapidated, roofs caving in and posing a danger to both patients and nurses. According to a spot check by Citizen TV, the wards that are crawling with lice have not been fumigated for months.

The spot check also revealed that the maximum security unit where potentially violent patients are held has only one nurse to take care of 147 patients, this against the global standard of one nurse for six patients.

“We have no staff capacity. Imagine one woman handling all these men,” noted a nurse at the hospital.

Rachael Nyamai, the committee chair stated that it was clear from the observations that the hospital “needs a total senior staff overhaul”.

The hospital’s medical superintendent Julius Ogatu said it requires at least Sh100 million to put things back in order, even as he revealed that it owes the Nairobi Water Company Sh40 million in unpaid bills

He further stated that the hospital that was established in 1904 still uses old generation drugs that are said to have serious side effects on patients.

The hospital was first established as a small pox isolation centre. It now stands in its deplorable state as a painful reminder of the country’s neglect of its psychiatric patients. 

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Mental Health mathari hospital

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