Obura m. Seth, Oliviaogoma, Catherine chacha, Angeline otieno

Ministry of health, Migori county government, Kenya

Introduction

Migoricounty is one of the counties in Nyanza region that have high prevalence rate of gender violence and particularly sexual violence. This is in relation to the community lifestyle,socialsetups, economic activities and lifestyle.The county has predominantly luo communities but with a significant number of KURIANS and other small communities like the Luhyas and the kisii.

Since Covid 19 and in presence of our children at home,most children have been prays for abusers and particularly the girls.These have been the seasons of genital cuts among the Kurian Community and the kisii community aswell as the abasubacommunity.Sexual violence and physical abuse has been on and quite consistently.

Intervention

Employment of good collaborative and multisectoralapproach in management of survivors of sexual violence as well as pursuing justice for the survivor through walking one by one with the survivor has seen the team move successfully.

Success story

Ruth, a 14 years old class 8 girl has been staying with the aunt in Migori town. She left their rural home because she wanted to be in a better school to pass her exams. The girl was however constantly falling sick and so the mother requested that the girl be back home so that she could be seen by some man who could pray with her.
The girl was led to the man’s home who stayed up with her over a couple of nights purporting to be praying for her.

Ruth explains that the man could give her some concoction to drink before prayers and after drinking the concoction, she could sleep and only wake up in the morning full of blood and white substances around the private area. She also experiences an unusual pain in the lower abdominal area. This she feared explaining to the mother.

Two months later the lady started having unusual feelings and she also missed her menses for the two consecutive months went to the hospital and confirmed she was pregnant. She had no otherwise but to plan for suicides opted not to share the information with anyone because she feared the shame that had befallen her.

One morning, she wrote a letter and kept it under a book in her bedroom. The letter summarized what she went through at the prayer man’s house and linked what she went through with her situation then. She then left for school with plans of not coming back.
Fortunately, the aunty found this letter and followed her up to school. She even shared the suicide note in social media and that is how this team responded .

Response

This team quickly organized an impromptu meeting with the Subcounty police officer commanding a station, the Child protection officer, the education office and of the staffs that attend the survivors of gender violence. The team had discussions and a greed to save the child.

Result

The child was sought for,historytaken,examinedtreted,counselled,and linked with the psychologist for appropriate counselling .The perpetrator was sought for and arrested before the magistrate in the court of law at Migori.

Lesson learnt

Good multisectoral linkage between nurses and other stakeholdres proved very handy in helping save the life of the girl who could have committed suicide.

Conclusion

As a good practice, developing a good network between nurses’ force and other team players both inside and outside the health department is very key in achieving war against different forms of violence.

Recommendation

This is a good practice that should be encouraged.
Like in theatre,all the team players should work closely