Inside Mathari Mental Hospital, Kenya's worst Hospital.

Patients at Kenya's only psychiatric hospital are often confined and immobilized using drugs that put them in a comatose-like state, factors that may have led to the recent escape of 40 male patients, an advocacy group points out in a new report.

Edah Maina, the chief executive officer, of the Kenya Society For the Mentally Handicapped said the Mathari psychiatric hospital is violating its patients' rights under Kenya's constitution.

Patients at Mathari are recognized as people with psychosocial disabilities under the new constitution, which
means they should be in a rehabilitation program that does not isolate them from their families, she said.

"They should be in a program ... one that they consent to and is not forced on to them; and among other things, a program that ensures their continued productivity as members of society, not one that immobilizes them through use of outdated/outlawed drugs that turns them into mere zombies," said Maina.

Mathari hospital says that 34 of the patients who escaped 13-days-ago have been brought back by parents, guardians and members of the public.
The hospital, where serious cases of mental illness are referred from the rest of the country, has 675 patients in the general wards.

The conditions at the hospital are sickening, and it is part of the reason that mental patients broke out. The admission rates have gone up from kshs.3,000 to kshs.5,000, making many poor patients unable to access the hospital.

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