40 patients escape from Mathari Mental Hospital: ‘Locked up and Forgotten, After 40 patients escape from a mental hospital by overpowering guards, the scene of “a dead body locked up in a seclusion cell with a patient” is once again getting the world’s attention.
The mental hospital that the 40 patients escaped from on Sunday is the Mathari Mental Hospital in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, reported BBC on May 13, 2013.
The Mathari Mental Hospital, which is Kenya’s biggest psychiatric hospital, was once before in the news when a CNN crew visited the hospital in 2011. “The CNN crew reported that during a visit to the hospital, they found a dead body locked up in a seclusion cell with a patient.”
The 2011 CNN documentary “Locked up and Forgotten” which described the human rights abuses at the Mathari Mental Hospital in Kenya, won the Amnesty International Media award and brought the plight of Kenya’s mentally disabled to the forefront of the world’s media -- at least for a while.
“Deprived of medical care and therapy, an estimated three million mentally disabled individuals are ostracized by society, concealed and locked away inside their own communities, often by their own families.”
In 2011, the CNN documentary “Locked up and Forgotten” lead to domestic and international human rights groups to call for Kenya’s government intervention in the treatment of mentally ill individuals both in Kenya’s communities and at the Mathari Mental Hospital.
On Sunday, however, 40 patients escaped from Mathari Mental Hospital.
“Kenya's Standard newspaper reports that the group escaped from the state hospital after complaining that the medicine given to them was ineffective.”
According to Senior Nairobi police officer Moses Ombati, the patients at the Mathari Mental Hospital had staged a protest on Sunday before they overpowered guards and escaped.
According to Divisional Police chief Samuel Anampiu, the escape was not a spur-of-the moment “crazy” act but a well-planned escape.
"They must have strategized. It is not possible that, without proper planning, 75 people can break two doors and more than half of them run away."
As of Monday, police are still searching for 30 of the patients. Eight of the 40 escapees were brought back to the Mathari Mental Hospital by their families and two returned on their own.
One of the two mental patients who returned on his own said that "I just followed one of the patients... then made my way home. At home, I realised the environment was different.”
Even though “Mathari is a place most Kenyans fear,” where else could he have gone.
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
40 patients escape from Mathari Mental Hospital: ‘Locked up and Forgotten’
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