A Kenyan Doctor's Ordeal Battling Disinformation on Hospital Wards

This article is part of IranWire's ongoing coverage of Covid-19 disinformation in different countries, in partnership with Health Studio.

By Shon Osimbo for Health Studio

Doctor Peter Shitoche is a specialist in emergency medicine and critical care working in an intensive care unit in Kakamega County, Kenya. This doctor contracted Covid-19 himself while tending to patients and has spoken of the discrimination he and others suffered due to disinformation about the virus in this locality. 

Kakamega is one of the areas of Kenya where disinformation about coronavirus has posed a serious obstacle in the fight against the epidemic. Dr. Shitoche was not only a victim of the stigma attached to Covid-19 by disinformation, but he was also subjected to false rumors around his positive test result.

“I am a victim of Covid-19,” he confirms. “In the process of tending to affected patients, I became infected. I communicated with my family and they couldn’t believe that I had tested positive. My family thought I was lying as they believe it doesn’t exist.

“I assured them that the virus is real, and I had been attending to affected patients. I got well after a while, I tested negative, and I decided to go and visit my family. It wasn’t easy for them to come and meet me. Everyone wondered why I was back... I had to do a lot of convincing for them to open the doors to me. The stigma started from my family as they thought I would infect them.”

Disinformation about coronavirus began to spread in Kakamega County after President Kenyatta decided to lock down three major metropolitan counties, which had all recorded spikes in Covid-19 cases, in April 2020.

“When Covid-19 started,” Dr. Shitoche said, “people in Kakamega County heard it was only three counties that were locked down: Nairobi, Mombasa and Kilifi. Everyone thought Covid-19 was something that had been cooked up.

“Fellow health workers couldn't believe it had reached the region. I remember the first case we experienced in casualty; doctors were trying to clear everyone out so that only a few of us remained to see the patient. The media reported that we were running away from the patient! The doctors who tended to the first patient were stigmatized by fellow health workers, who started looking at us as if we had already been infected with the virus. They distanced themselves from us.”

Fear across the country, he said, was exacerbated by people receiving the wrong information about coronavirus and how it spreads. “People did not understand that once you have a mask on and you’ve protected yourself, you might not infect others. The stigma had already started even among the health workers. They nicknamed doctors handling Covid-19 patients ‘Covid guys’. When people call you Covid-19, they assume that you are the disease itself.”

Some Kakamega residents, Dr. Shitoche added, believe that the epidemic was fabricated by the Kenyan government to solicit money from foreign donors. He has continued to insist to the residents that coronavirus is real, it is present in Kenya, and is badly impacted their own county during November. In fact the county’s biggest hospital, Kakamega General, was so hard-hit that all its isolation centers and the ICU were full and the hospital could not admit any new Covid-19 patients due to being at capacity. Even now, Dr. Shitoche says, some members of the general public still believe Covid-19 is not a real disease.

“I am a victim of the virus,” he says. “I’ve seen several casualties: people who just dropped dead in the hospital after testing positive. I've seen people incubated in the ICU here. Some have been discharged and some have died. My plea to residents in the county is to adhere to the guidelines.’’