Tag Archives: healthkenya

Death in the boot of our car

It appeared that an accident had occurred and by the time our car got to the scene, we expected the injured had been taken to hospital. So we were surprised to see a group of young men dangling two people between them. When we drew near, they started banging the side of our car. ‘Wasaidie mama, please tusaidie, ‘ the young men pleaded, asking us to help the injured men. My husband stopped, opened the boot of the car and lay the back chair flat. The two men were roughly dumped unto the boot and shoved about so that they could fit in.

Nursing: Nurturing a caring heart

‘When you ask a fresh student of nursing or medicine why they have chosen that career, they will tell you that they want to care for and help people. In college, they are trained briefly in communication theory, but when they go for practice, they watch their mentors shouting. Because it is normalised, they assimilate that behaviour. When they leave college, that caring heart is long forgotten because it did not receive any nurturing,’ says Mwanamvua.

The devil in health

As science sheds light on disease causation, attributing ill health to the devil is shifting to the periphery more and more. Take the example of Kilifi in the days when malaria was killing hundreds of children a year. A child that had cerebral malaria was thought to have been attacked by a spirit that hated bad smells and children suffering from convulsions were exposed to bad smells to drive the spirits away. Cerebral malaria has a high fatality rate and