In February 2020, Hosea Ndiretu was gang-raped by a group of men while leaving a bar in Nairobi. Within weeks, he realised he had a sexually transmitted infection (STI) and visited a government hospital to seek treatment.
But the 26-year-old business management graduate said his experience there was so horrible it made him develop a phobia of public hospitals.
“I developed anal warts [after the rape] which needed urgent treatment and went to a government health facility because of its affordability,” Ndiretu told Al Jazeera. “After explaining my predicament, the doctor asked if I was gay. I answered in the affirmative and he told me that they do not treat ‘evil people’.”
The doctor asked him to go to pro-gay rights civil society groups instead, Ndiretu said.
At the government hospital where he had sought treatment for gonorrhoea, 35-year-old Francis Onyango says the doctor attending to him called his colleagues into the room to mock him. So he sought solace in church instead.
“My pastor termed my problem as demonic and asked me to plant a ‘seed’ of $200 (Ksh 2,000) before he could pray for me. For his prayers to work, he ordered me not to take any form of medication,” said the Nairobi-based gym trainer.
Source Aljazeera
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD FRIDAY 3 JUNE 2022
