By Michael Orido
Medicine simplified? Meet the new ‘doctors’ in town
There are new ‘doctors’ in town. They cure all kinds of diseases. Hey! don’t start thinking of an appointment because you will not need one. The ‘doctors’ are on the streets.
Their clinics consist of tents, a table, a few plastic chairs, a loud speaker and some wonder gadget they call Acutherapy Machine (sic) or simply ACM. This gadget, according to the ‘doctors’ PointBlank encountered on the streets of Nairobi, detects all kinds of diseases that include diabetes, HIV and Aids, pneumonia, cancer, typhoid, gonorrhea and malaria.
No injections
All one needs to do is to place his fingers on the machine and voila!, you will know what you are suffering from. There is no need of blood tests or injections.
Once the device detects a disease — a service offered for free — the doctors then sell you medicine. Going by the number of people who flock the ‘clinics’, PointBlank believes that the machine actually works. But why are doctors, who spend six years in medicine school, not adopting it? Are the ‘clinics’ another con game? Who authorised the ‘doctors’ to operate on the streets?
Where crime is sweet music to police ears
Driving on July 3 along Kendu Bay-Homa Bay Road near Kuoyo Kochia market at around 10pm, Mr Charles Okore encountered an incident that makes him believe the talk about police reforms is a load of rhetoric.
“I found thugs had barricaded the road with huge rocks. A white pick-up truck was parked at the spot with its headlamps on,” he recounts. With God’s luck, Okore successfully meandered through the rocks as the thugs made frantic efforts to stop him. A shaken Okore narrates he rushed to Kendu Bay Police Station to alert police officers.
“To my shock, the officers on duty didn’t show an iota of interest. In fact, one of them, a lady, observed that the gang carjacked somebody at the point the previous day,” he says. With such kind of inaction, wonders Okore, what will not stop the public from believing the officers are colluding with thugs? He later called Kisumu OCPD Musa Kongoli, who alerted his Homa Bay counterpart.
“I thank him for the help, but my concern is, what happens to those who do not have contacts of police bosses, do they get any help at the police station,” he observes.
