Patient dies by suicide in Homa Bay County Referral Hospital

Homa Bay County Teaching and Referral Hospital. [File, Standard]

A patient hanged himself on Sunday inside a toilet at Homa Bay County Teaching and Referral Hospital.

The hospital Chief Executive Officer Dr Vincent Oduor said Mike Juma hanged himself using a belt inside the toilet of Ward 7 hospital.

Oduor said Juma was receiving treatment for TB.

On Sunday morning, the patient reportedly told his caretaker that he was going to bathe. But the caretaker realised something was amiss when he took unusually long.

Oduor said the caretaker went into the bathing room but failed to find Juma, only to walk into the toilet and stumble on his body.

"He had told the caretaker that he was going to bathe, but he took too long to return to his cubicle in the ward. The caretaker went to look for him and found he had hanged himself in the toilet," Dr Oduor said.

The caretaker called medics, who asked the guards to remove the body from the toilet.

"Our security guards rushed to the scene before the body was moved to our mortuary," Oduor said.

Homa Bay Sub-county Police Commander Emmanuel Kiplagat said preliminary investigations revealed that Juma had skipped TB drugs for some time before the incident.

However, Kiplagat said they will conduct a postmortem to establish the cause of the death.

"There is a version that the deceased did not adhere to TB medication, raising suspicion about the cause of death. But we are waiting for the postmortem to tell us what caused his death," Kiplagat said.

The police boss said they are investigating the incident.