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POLITICS AND POLICY
Ministry defends jailing of tuberculosis patients
From left: Henry Ng’etich, Patrick Kipng’etich, and Daniel Ng’etich at Milimani Law Courts last week during the ruling of a case which was filed by Allan Maleche on their behalf seeking to challenge the confinement of TB patients. PHOTO | FILE
Posted Wednesday, March 30 2016 at 19:35
The Health ministry has defended imprisonment of some patients with tuberculosis (TB), saying Kenya lacks secure isolation wards.
The imprisonment of TB patients Daniel Ng’etich and Patrick Kipng’etich who refused to take medication sparked debate, with critics terming it as human rights violation.
The two men spent two-and-a-half months in prison in 2010.
Dr Muraguri said when not taking TB drugs as required then safeguarding the safety of others, under the public health act, supersedes an individual’s right to comfort.
Judge Mumbi Ngugi last week ruled that a crowded prison was the worst place to try and isolate people with infectious disease, directing the Health ministry to issue policy guidelines in 90 days.
For the government, safeguarding the public from infection and upholding the patients’ rights is a tricky balancing act.
Three wards
There are only three isolation wards for more than 110,000 patients diagnosed with TB every year and about 600 with multi-drug resistant (MDR) TB.
The isolation wards are at Kenyatta National Hospital, Homa Bay hospital and Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret.
Dr Muraguri defends the jailing option, saying Kenya lacks right facilities to isolate the patients and confinement in prisons secures the rest as the cost of treating TB is too high.
Several other countries such as Israel have opted to incarceration to control the spread of TB. In US, mug shots of patients were put on the evening news and they were later jailed.
The ministry’s biggest headache is the drug-resistant TB, which is too costly to treat as new cases rise yearly. Treating one MDR-TB patient for two years costs Sh2 million.
‘‘The disease is more complicated and expensive to treat than ordinary TB and its outcome is poor thus the reason for imprisonment until one is done with the two years standard treatment,’’ said Dr Enos Masini, the head of TB Unit in the Health ministry.
MDR-TB cases have been rising from 283 two years ago to about 600.