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"id": 813200,
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"speaker_name": "Sen. (Prof.) Ongeri",
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"legal_name": "Samson Kegeo Ongeri",
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"content": "Thank you, Madam Temporary Speaker. I am just looking at the common issues. I have talked about the mood, thinking and behaviour. When you put these three categories together, they create a disease burden for this country. Burden is measured by the percentage of the people who are affected by these. The disease burden, through the mental illnesses, constitutes 13 per cent of the population in this country and globally. You cannot ignore that. If you look at our mental illness policy outline from 2015 to 2030, it will rise up to about 15 per cent. So, we must see it as a burden of disease that we must deal with and not run away from it. I must mention about stigma. Once somebody labels you as having mental illnesses, you will be subjected to some level of stigma which is very difficult to erase, for instance, the stigma of HIV/AIDS. When we had the HIV/AIDS pandemic when I was the Minister for Health, I had a very difficult time trying to get Kenyans to accept and think that HIV/AIDS is a normal condition. It is only caused by a virus, but you need to know how to manage it, what kinds of foods you should take, that is, the nutritional requirements like the micronutrients that you need to take, et cetera . Of course, if the viral load density is very high, then you need to take some antiretroviral drugs. Therefore, it was a question of image and psych on how to deal with these things. When we got around, I realised that the most affected were the young people. That is when we brought in that popular band from New York City; Cool and Gang, here in Nairobi at Uhuru Park. The whole idea was to attract the young people and in the process of attracting them, I said: “Why do you not know your HIV/AIDS status?” I was sure, at that time, that 90 per cent of the Kenyan population was HIV negative. It was only 10 to 14 per cent of the population that was HIV positive because that was the overall prevalence rate at that time. Similarly, we can adopt a similar approach in dealing with the mental illnesses like any other normal illnesses that we want to deal with. This will enable us deal with this issue of stigma because the minute you stigmatize that patient as mental, nobody would want to touch them. So, what are the consequences of this? There are many sick people with mental illness cases hidden and bounded up in the house as well as neglected. That is, obviously, human rights abuse. All you need to do is to take them to a health facility. I want to thank the Movers of this Motion, Sen. Kasanga and Sen. Chebeni because it is now time we are saying that we must tackle this issue head on. It is not a difficult condition; it is preventable. You would be surprised to know that some of these disorders which are genetic are very few; they are not a majority. Therefore, where do these others come from? They are acquired like the social stigma that we put around ourselves. Some may be psychological, biological and environmental factors. I have talked about the environmental factors; the pressures around – poverty or even the meal for the day; how am I going to survive today? That is why when we say that we are creating poverty--- When we fight corruption, we are not doing it for the sake of it; we are driving the population of Kenya from the level of depression because they do not know how to survive on a given day. The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}