A 41-year-old patient committed suicide at Vihiga County Referral Hospital in Mbale town, Kenya on Thursday night.
According to News24, James Mbotela had visited home from Nairobi the previous Sunday before being admitted at the facility on Wednesday. His body was found hanging on the emergency corridor where he had committed suicide on Friday morning.
According to the wife Joyce Avisinwa, her husband complained of severe pain on one side of his body before he left home in company of his sister to the hospital.
“I stayed with him for three days after he came from Nairobi and he said he was going to seek medical assistance from a chemist after incessant pains, only to be told later that he had gone to the hospital with his sister,” said Avisinwa.
She added, “I have been staying with him in the hospital ever since, but on Thursday during the day he asked me to go home.”
Revealing more details about the incident, Avisinwa said she was called by a nurse that night informing her that the patient had disappeared from the ward and could not be traced.
She said the news came as a shocker to her as she immediately called her in-laws who accompanied her to the hospital in the morning.
“When we arrived at the hospital, we found that he had not been traced so far. We started looking everywhere around the hospital and later found him hanging on the corridor,” she said.
According to the County health executive Zilpah Andiva who briefed journalists at the hospital, security guards in the wards were alerted after the patient disappeared.
“After checking in the toilet where he first went after leaving his bed, security officers tried searching other sections of the hospital but in vain,” she said.