Global Health Now: 'The Push to Get Kenyan Cult Leaders to Embrace Modern Medicine'
APRIL 30, 2024
Below are extracts from an article in Global Health Now, and a comment from me.
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LUKHOKHWE, Kenya—On a cool Thursday afternoon in a village in Bungoma County, near the Ugandan border, Eliud Wekesa strides out of his modern house... The 43-year-old father of eight is not new to controversy: He claims to be Jesus and has hundreds who listen closely to his teachings, including those about health.
Wekesa is only one of many religious and cult leaders, not only in Kenya but across the region, feeding followers a flawed gospel that dissuades them from seeking medical care when they are sick—claiming that only prayers can heal them. But health officials in Kenya (with police backing, at times) are working to dispel these messages.
Wekesa himself has run afoul of the law for his teachings; he’s been arrested several times. In 2011, police showed up in his compound in four SUVs and charged him with discouraging people from seeking medical care and preventing their children from going to school. He was held in a Bungoma police cell for 16 days...
Edwin Ambasu, the head of Kakamega County’s Disease Surveillance and Response team... “Some of the church leaders don’t buy into our ideologies nor agree to our strategies and interventions, and they hinder their followers and congregation from taking medication, telling them they will be healed in the name of Jesus,” He believes, however, that this is changing with the emergence of community health monitoring units and the involvement of religious leaders in government strategies — accompanied by training on the truth about medicine’s importance to human health...
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COMMENT (NPW): The article suggests that in Kenya there is a confrontation between religious beliefs about illness and modern medicine. Indeed the title implies a 'push to get cult leaders to embrace modern medicine'. Even the use of the word 'cult' is laden. In my understanding, this is not the ideal way forward. We have discussed this previously and recent literature on this suggests that a more nuanced approach is needed to reach a mutual understanding. I look forward to hear your thoughts.
Best wishes, Neil
HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org
