By JONATHAN KOMEN
NAIROBI, KENYA: Many rehabilitation centres around the country are ill-equipped with manpower to handle addicts who want to quit. Incompetence in these facilities could also explain why many alcohol addicts relapse.
“Many rehab centres do not screen and assess the patients properly, due to unqualified staff and also sometimes they turn a blind eye because they are only after getting in as many clients as they can even when they know they should not admit certain individuals,” said Brenda Ochieng, a recovering alcoholic.
Now a counsellor, Brenda adds: “When screening is done, it is for the purpose of ensuring eligibility and appropriateness of the client seeking to join the rehab programme.”
There are five levels of treatment professionally required – early intervention, outpatient, intensive outpatient, inpatient and sub-acute residential and medically managed inpatient.
“Sometimes, a patient needs level one (outpatient) but they admit him or her in level three. Those who need level four are sometimes admitted in rehabilitation, where psychiatric nurses pump the patient with psychotics and make him a zombie, and at the end of six months the patient is discharged, no better than when he was admitted. Of course, with this improper treatment, relapse will be the norm,” she says.
Dr Lukoye Atwoli, a psychiatry lecturer at the Moi University School of Medicine, says there are a few professional rehab centres in the country, which are poorly funded and thus do not fetch optimal results. “Healthcare professionals can help to reduce absurd drinking depending on the level of the problem,” he adds.
