Ignore theories of faith healing - clerics on Shakahola incident

Faith-based organisations have called on Kenyans to visit accredited hospitals whenever they fall sick.

The organisations under the umbrella of the Christian Health Association of Kenya (CHAK) have further urged Kenyans to ignore theories of faith healing that tend to ignore science.

Speaking in Nairobi on Thursday, the association SG Samuel Mwenda also called upon the relevant government agencies to intervene and bring the culprits in the Shakahola deaths to book.

Mwenda noted that as faith-based organisations, the vision is to offer quality healthcare for all to the glory of God while the mission is to engage communities to empower them to seek and access quality healthcare.

“We discourage the idea of any group or individual who preaches against access to healthcare. We call upon members of the public to be modest and not to be brainwashed,” Mwenda said.

“We believe that religion must not act as a catalyst to retrogressive myths and misconceptions that will make our people perish.”

CHAK is a national faith-based organisation of the protestant churches’ health institutions and programmes from all of Kenya.

Their call comes even as the government on Thursday began conducting a postmortem on the bodies exhumed from the Shakahola forest in Kilifi.

This follows a directive by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Noordin Haji earlier this week.

The Kilifi cult death toll hit 98 after eight more bodies were exhumed by the multiagency team on Wednesday. 

On Tuesday alone, 17 bodies were exhumed from a gravesite in Shakahola village, Kilifi, where followers of Pastor Paul Mackenzie Nthenge are believed to have been buried.

Mackenzie of the Good News International Church is said to have instructed members to starve themselves to "meet Jesus."

Homicide detectives have since last week been searching for graves on the 800 acres belonging to Mackenzie.

The cult leader was arrested on April 14 following a tip-off that suggested the existence of shallow graves containing the bodies of some of his followers.