Kenyan man chops off testicles in apparent suicide attempt

56-year-old, Njoroge Waweru, has cut off his testicles using a kitchen knife in the Nakuru County of Kenya in what police described as an attempted suicide.

According to NTV, the incident which happened early Tuesday was reported by one Ms Salome Wanja Njenga, a resident of the Nairobi area of Kiamaina Ward.

Waweru had grabbed the knife while his wife was in the bathroom, and chopped off his testicles in the bid to take his own life.

”At around 07:30 hrs, while she was in the bathroom her husband took a kitchen knife and chopped off his testicles,” the report filed at Kiugoine Police Station in Nakuru County read in part.

“A blood-stained kitchen knife was recovered as an exhibit,” the report further revealed.

The wife, seeing her husband groaning in a pool of his own blood, had rushed him to the Esther Memorial Hospital located in Maili Sita where he was tended to and later referred to the Nakuru County Referral Hospital – under a stable condition.

In the year 2020, the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights said about 1,442 Kenyans attempted suicide between 2015 and 2018, which it said were mere conservative figures – as only a fraction of reported cases were recorded.

The commission also attributed the rise in cases to mental ill-health occasioned by descent in the socio-economic state of the country, adding that it was the “last resort and path of escape for individuals with unaddressed mental health needs”.

“Research has shown that structural determinants of mental ill-health such as extreme poverty, lack of access to empowerment opportunities and discrimination increase the likelihood of individuals committing suicide,” the KNHCR had noted.

Also, the World Health Organisation, in a report published in June 2021, said, “Suicides happen impulsively in moments of crisis with a breakdown in the ability to deal with life stresses, such as financial problems, relationship breakup or chronic pain and illness,” adding that just in 2019, “over 77% of global suicides occurred in low- and middle-income countries”.