Aynsley Genga is JURIST’s senior Kenya correspondent. She files this report from Nairobi.
Susan Njoki’s tragic death sent shockwaves through Kenya’s mental health community—not only because it marked the loss of a passionate advocate, but because her final days revealed the system’s failure to help those it claimed to protect. Susan Njoki—founder of Toto Touch Kenya, mental health advocate, mother, and a woman who openly shared her lived experience with bipolar disorder—was pronounced dead on July 15. Her death occurred just one day after she was reportedly taken by four people who forced their way into her home—a team of two women and two men who claimed to be acting on instructions from Susan’s psychiatrist and husband.
In an audio recording obtained by KTN News, Susan described a terrifying account of being forcibly removed from her home. She recalled being injected by a group strangers who said they were nurses, but refused to answer her questions. “Now a group of nurses invaded my bedroom and forced an injection on me,” she wrote. “They ignored my questions as a patient, a survivor of bipolar disorder.”
Susan described being taken away without explanation as she plead for them to stop, “Why are you forcing me to take injections? Why are you forcing me to leave this place, yet you allege you are professionals?” Susan said her husband, Alois Ngure, was behind the incident, alleging that this had not been the first time her husband had tried to institutionalize her against her will.
After being taken to a mental health facility in Nairobi called the Chiromo Group of Hospitals, Braeside Branch, Susan tried to contact her family. She posted a message on Facebook recounting her experience, but according to reports, nurses within the facility forced her to delete her post, then confiscated her phone. Her voice, already struggling to be heard, was silenced further by the very people meant to help her.
Hearing her voice—shaken, confused and desperate—was gut-wrenching. It’s hard to put into words the betrayal she must have felt in those final hours. “As much as I have depression, as they say, or I am bipolar, that does not determine my fate,” she said. “I was to go and see two clients the day they forcefully took me. I was not sick. Why are you taking me back to where I came from?” In her final recording, she added, “They forced me to lie down and injected me again. I told them I was allergic to some medication. If death looks like this, let them take me back home.”
The day after Susan was declared dead, her family, who had been denied access to her the day before, received her not as a daughter or mother, but as a body. At first, the hospital claimed there had been an issue with her medication. But the post-mortem revealed something far more disturbing: Susan had been murdered. The cause of death was manual strangulation.
The discovery sparked public outrage. Susan’s family, along with mental health advocates and the wider online community, are demanding justice. The hospital’s CEO said the hospital was willing to cooperate with investigations, but stated that several medical personnel were reportedly on the run. The police have begun questioning those involved.
What happened to Susan Njoki is horrifying, but perhaps even more troubling is the possibility that she is not the only one. There may be others we will never hear about. Our laws are meant to protect everyone, but clearly that protection is not guaranteed.
Article 28 of Kenya’s Constitution guarantees every person the right to be treated with dignity. The Mental Health Act, 2022, reinforces this through multiple safeguards.
Section 3 of the Act affirms the right of persons with mental illness to be free from physical and mental abuse, discrimination, and exploitation. Section 3B discusses on one’s right to consent to treatment. It provides as follows:
(1) Every health care provider shall, where the person with mental illness has attained the age of majority—
(a) inform the person with mental illness, of the right of that person to choose an appropriate form of treatment; and
(b) obtain the written consent from that person before administering any treatment.
The Act prohibits the “ill-treatment” of patients within mental health institutions. Section 51 states that “[a] person in charge of, or any person employed at, a mental health facility or unit as the case may be, who strikes, ill-treats, abuses or wilfully neglects any patient in the mental health facility or unit as the case may be, commits an offence.”
It’s clear from these provisions that Kenya has laws in place that are meant to protect people with mental illnesses. But laws on paper are not always laws in practice. If this could happen to someone as visible, loved, and outspoken as Susan Njoki, what about those who suffer in silence, whose stories never go viral?
What happened to Susan Njoki and probably many others whose stories we may never hear, is something no one should ever be forced to experience. That this could happen to someone so outspoken, so visible, and so deeply committed to mental health advocacy is terrifying. What about those without a platform? Those without support? The truth is, this wasn’t an isolated incident. It was a reflection of how broken our systems are. And if people can be dragged, silenced, and killed while calling for help, then we haven’t just failed them; we’ve allowed the very places meant to offer healing to become sites of harm.
Something has to change. Not just in policy, but in power. In how we listen, how we protect, and how we care.
