Miritini Rehab treating 294, requires Sh1.2bn upgrade

Salim Chande, not his real name, first used heroin in 2001, when he was only 14 years old.

He was in a group of five friends, mostly his Form 1 classmates at a school in Mombasa.

“We sneaked out of school to play football for a team whose coach had promised to pay us to help them proceed to the semi-finals of a tournament,” Chande said.

But before heading to the field in Likoni, the group said they have to pass through ‘the base’ to ‘charge’ to be extra strong for the match.

‘The base’ was a secluded area in Likoni where the friends used to spend their free time and ‘charging’ meant smoking weed.

“I did not know that the weed was laced with heroin. I thought it was just the normal bhang that I had used before,” Chande told the Star at the Miritini Treatment and Rehabilitation Centre.

The 34-year-old said he felt weird after the smoking session.

“I thought I was sick and ended up not playing in the match. My friends laughed at me. They later told me I had smoked heroin and said it would get better,” Chande said.

It was the start of a 20-year hazardous journey of drug addiction.

“From then on, I had that thirst for heroin and would steal money from my parents or cook some stories about fictitious money needed at school, just to get doses of heroin,” Chande, whose parents were relatively wealthy, said.

He is now one of the 24 inpatients at the Miritini Treatment and Rehabilitation Centre.

The facility, he said, has come in handy, saying his parents tried different other private rehabs in Mombasa and Kwale but soon gave up.

The facilities were expensive and he kept on relapsing.

“I believe I am on the right path now,” Chande, who was a promising footballer with dreams of playing in Kenya’s top tier football league, said.

On Saturday, the National Authority for the Campaign Against Alcohol and Drug Abuse CEO Victor Okioma said the Miritini facility needs about Sh1.2 billion to be fully fledged as President Uhuru Kenyatta had directed.

The facility was used by National Youth Service as a training centre until 2015 when Uhuru directed that it be converted into a rehabilitation centre.

This followed a meeting with Coast leaders at State House Mombasa.

The rehabilitation centre currently houses 24 inpatients, with 270 more outpatients undergoing treatment.  

The anti-drug abuse authority says the facility, once upgraded, will have a capacity of 200 inpatients and will be the centre of excellence in rehabilitation in East Africa.

However, the effecting of Uhuru’s directive has been slow due to some challenges that Nacada encountered, including relocation of the NYS recruits.

Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i gave an alternative land to the NYS recruits and they relocated.

The authority also had challenges trying to relocate the controversial 100 containers that had been earmarked for the Beyond Zero programme.

From February 2020, Nacada launched the outpatient unit at the facility with about 40 coming for their methadone dose daily.

The outpatient population has grown to the current 270.

In March this year, the first batch of about 30 inpatients were brought in. They were treated and discharged.

Now, the second lot of 24 inpatients are undergoing a comprehensive rehabilitation programme.

“The vision for us at Nacada is to have a centre of excellence in terms of management of addiction in the country,” Okioma said.

The Public Works department has developed a master plan that will cost about Sh1.2 billion when fully implemented.

However, the allocation of funds has been slow and erratic slowing things down.

The authority requested Parliament, through the National Assembly Committee on Administration and National Security, to intervene.

Limuru MP Peter Mwathi, who is the committee chair, said the project has been moving slowly which is a major concern.

“We want to know the programmes that are being run here and most importantly what programmes they have to ensure that people are sensitised against the use of drugs,” Mwathi said.

He said since Parliament will soon be discussing the supplementary budget, the committee will persuade other MPs to support the project in terms of advocacy for the required Sh1.2 billion.

“So that the centre can be what the President intended to be,” Mwathi said.

He said though other parts of the country also need such facilities, Mombasa and the Coast region has the highest prevalence of drug abuse and addiction in the country.

Nacada chair Prof Mabel Imbuga said the authority is keen to reduce access to drugs and alcohol for youth.

“This is going to be a rehabilitation centre specifically for alcohol and drug abuse. It is going to be a centre of excellence not only on Kenya but also a benchmark for the whole of the African region,” Imbuga said.

The facility sits on about 13 acres.

Nacada has identified at least 23 hotspots for drug and alcohol abuse across the country.

These include various parts of the Coast, Central, Nyanza, Rift Valley and Nairobi.

Matiang’i last week launched the Rapid Results Initiative across the country, with the main focus being Mombasa and the Coast region, where drug abuse prevalence is highest.

Coast regional coordinator John Elungata last Tuesday said shady businessmen have increasingly been importing substandard alcoholic drinks through the Mombasa port.

He said the genuine ones are not taken through the requisite regulatory processes and end up in the market without paying the necessary taxes.

“We would like residents to work with us so as to protect innocent Kenyans who are duped into drinking these illicit and substandard alcoholic drinks,” Elungata said.

Imbuga said youth are the main target of these unscrupulous businessmen, who are taking advantage of their large population, in the country.

About 70 per cent of the people in Kenya are 35 years of age or below.

“We want to direct the youth the proper way so that they acquire the right skills and help build the country. We love Kenya,” the Nacada chair said.

By December 2019, Nacada had estimated there were 18,000 hooked to drugs on the Coast.

Okioma said the focus is community–based rehabilitation so as not to exhaust the Miritini facility with people who can be handled at the community level.