Rehabilitation of drug users is a long process that involves a number of things including physical activities, counselling and medication.
However, in Kenya, some rehabilitation centres use violence on the patients in their facilities. An expose by BBC Africa showed a rehabilitation centre in Eastleigh, a residential area in Nairobi inhabited by many people of Somali origin, torturing the patients.
Patients were constantly subjected to abuse, beating and are also forced to drink a toxic liquid called “harmala”, which makes them vomit.
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The expose also highlighted that some of the patients found themselves at the centre by force. Women in the video complained that they were detained because they had fallen out with their husbands and a young man says he was put in the centre because he had refused to go to school.
The video highlights the way Africans treat cases of drug abuse and mental illness.
It also shows that the people running one of the centres use their religious background to treat the patients. In one of the centres, they recite the Quran to the patient, with the aim of rebuking the demons from them. They also put anyone who ‘misbehaves’ in the ‘discipline room’, a small room where they are kept and even chained to a window.
Watch the video below:
