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Robert can not pay for himself. Hospitals around the world hold patients as hostages.
Robert Wanyonyi is well, yet he is shut up in the hospital.
PHOTO: Desmond Tiro / TT NYHETSBYRÃ…N
Robert Wanyonyi does not escape from Kenyatta Hospital in Nairobi. He is well, but can not pay for himself.
NTB
5 hours ago 4 hours ago
Wanyonyi has no chance to pay the bill of four million Kenyan shillings (around 320,000 dollars) for the treatment of shooting and shock injury after a robbery. The hospital management keeps him as hostage until someone in the family at least can scrape together a portion of the amount.
This way of collecting money is surprisingly widespread around the world. If you do not pay, you will not get out. Hospitals use sensible compulsion schemes, such as armed guards, locked doors and links to force patients treated to care for themselves.
Even without death, a person is automatically released to the family. Kenyan hospitals and shelters have hundreds of bodies in custody. They will not be left to their families until the bill is settled.
A comprehensive survey reported by the news agency AP has shown hospitalization in more than 30 countries. The survey is based on hospital archives, patient lists and talks with dozens of doctors, nurses, health researchers, patients and health directors.
Custody is practiced in countries like Philippines, India, China, Thailand, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Bolivia and Iran. Among more than 20 hospitals that the AP visited in Congo, there is only one who does not use this way to force money.
- The more we look, the more hospitals we find that run this way. Hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps millions, are affected by this worldwide, says Dr. Ashish Jha at the Harvard Global Health Institute.
Alice Kabuya, 20, does not escape from Masaidizi Health Center in Lubumbashi, Congo. She can not pay 150 dollars for a birth. The man is without work, but tries to scrape enough money to get his wife and daughter released.
Jerome Delay / AP / NTB scanpix
During several visits to the Kenyatta Hospital in Nairobi, August, a hospital rated as one of the best in Africa in terms of infection control, AP reporters discovered unarmed armed guards guarded over patients. Detained slept on the bed straight on the floor in the locked room. Guards denied a worried dad to see his little child.
Will not answer
Kenya's health department canceled several interview talks with AP and rejected repeated requests for a comment.
International health experts refer to hospital detention as a violation of human rights. However, the United Nations, the United States, international aid organizations, donors and charity organizations keep silent while pumping billions of dollars into these countries to support wakeful health care and prevent the spread of communicable diseases.
30-year-old Karena Anny and her infant at Masaidiano Health Center in Lubumbashi, Congo. Anny has been detained for a month because she can not pay 400 dollars for a Caesarean section.
Jerome Delay / AP / NTB scanpix
"Many people know that this happens, but turn their backs on. They think there are more urgent needs in public health care in the affected countries. Therefore, no such issues are given any attention, "says health expert Sophie Harman at Queen Mary University in London.
Hospitals operating this business acknowledge that it is not accountable to keep patients back. However, several say that in some cases parts of the amount owed will be paid, while shutdown will be deterrent.
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Business
Several hospitals defend the business. The director of the Congo Katuba Reference Hospital rejects that this has someone with human rights to do. He believes that normal business operations mean that people make up for themselves.
"Nobody will return in a month or two and pay," says Leedy Nyembo-Mugalu.
Congo Katuba Reference Hospital defends to keep patients. Here are employees who guard the gateway to the hospital.
Jerome Delay / TT NEWS OFFICE
Kenyan human rights defenders strongly regret that the practice continues, despite an important statement in the Supreme Court in 2015. At that time, the detention of two women was termed "inhumane and degrading." One woman and her newborn child were kept in a room next to a flooded toilet for a whole month. The other woman was linked to the bed with handcuffs after a flight attempt.
So late last month, the Supreme Court reiterated that imprisonment of patients is not an acceptable way of collecting debts. However, much remains before the Supreme Court's rulings are enforced.