Questions over paternity tests at Government Chemist

Grace, a small-scale trader in Nairobi’s Githurai area, is bitter with the Government Chemist.

Her initial paternity tests at the Government Chemist on September 7, 2012, as ordered by the Children’s Court, showed that her former boyfriend was not the biological father of her baby. The man, a senior official of the Kenya Revenue Authority in Nairobi, had declined to support the child, claiming he was not the father.

However, a shocked Grace requested the court for a second test from another lab. It took an arrest warrant threat by the court months later to compel the man to submit to another test. The follow-up test on May 23, 2013 at Pathologists Lancet laboratories, an independent medical lab network, returned a positive result, showing that the man was indeed the biological father of Grace’s child. But the man vehemently disputed the accuracy of the second test, prompting Grace to push for another confirmatory test in another independent laboratory, Pachcare. It would take another nine months to get the man to take the third test after the court, again, intervened and compelled him to submit himself for the test or face arrest. The third test confirmed that the man was the biological father of the child.

Grace, who is still embroiled in a tussle with the father of her child on maintenance, is angry with the Government Chemist.

“I have gone through a lot of suffering because of the first results by the Government Chemist. Either the staff members were incompetent and produced inaccurate results or they were compromised to alter the results of the paternity,” she said.

Grace’s case is just one incident of conflicting results of paternity tests by the Government Chemist and private medical lab, especially in child maintenance cases. Unreliability, either through error or doctoring, may mean that some people may be evading their parental responsibilities while others may be bearing the burden of raising children they did not sire.

The credibility of paternity tests has come into focus, considering the number of maintenance and child custody cases are on the rise. In 2014, 619 cases were filed in the Childrens Court at Milimani Law Courts in Nairobi but the number increased to 1,661 last year.

Invariably, the cases involve well-to-do individuals accused of neglecting their parental responsibility. It is because of the high stakes that eyebrows have been raised whether the conflicting paternity tests are as a result of scientific errors or manipulation.

  Biological father

Another case involves John Ndegwa, a Nyeri-based pharmacist in a government facility who received a lot of media publicity over his court battles with a lady who claimed he was the father of her child.

An initial test at the Government Chemist showed that he was the biological father, but his spirited attempts to have a repeat test in an independent lab were resisted by his accuser.

“She kept dodging requests and summons to appear for a second test since I was very certain I was not the father. When she failed to show up, the court terminated the case in July 2013,” Dr Ndegwa recalled.

He added: “If she truly believed that I was the father of the child, she would not have hesitated to come for the second test. This shows that the first test at the Government Chemist was compromised deliberately in her favour.”

Winnie Ambula, a worker at the Ministry of Health, got the Children Court in Nairobi to compel a man —whom she claimed was the father of her child — to go for a paternity test at the Government Chemist after months of hide and seek.

However, when the results finally came out in July 2012, it suggested that the man, a police officer, was not the biological father of the child. Winnie was left in utter shock at the turn of events.

“I am 100 per cent sure that he is the father of my child. That is why I want the test to be repeated in another laboratory to confirm the truth,” she said.

Since then, Ambula has not managed to raise the Sh35,000 needed to have a second paternity test in a private facility

“I will get the money and show that the man is indeed the father. I believe the results at the Government Chemist were inaccurate or deliberately manipulated,” she said.

Similarly, Millicent is struggling to raise her baby single-handedly after her attempts to get her husband, a pharmacist in a government hospital, to pay for child support fees failed. This was after paternity tests at the Government Chemist indicated that the man was not the biological father. But Millicent is convinced of foul play.

“I will not rest until I raise enough money to have an independent test conducted. But the Government Chemist needs to be investigated,” she said.

When contacted, Government Chemist Head Leonard Waweru said the allegations of inaccurate or manipulated paternity results are crimes that need to be reported to the relevant authorities for necessary action.

“Any evidence should be used to prosecute those involved. I would advise those making the allegations to make statements to the police,” he wrote in a text message in response to our queries.

Ahmed Kalebi, a Consultant Pathologist and CEO of Pathologists Lancet labs, acknowledged the problem. Dr kalebi said there have been various cases including some in which Lancet has had to testify in court on their results that contradicted those by the Government Chemist.

He attributed these to possible transcription errors during typing of Government Chemist reports that could be deliberately orchestrated by unscrupulous staff or inadvertently done as the paternity reports from that institution usually get manually typed. “To prevent inaccurate or doctoring of lab results, the Government should invest in automated electronic resulting systems like what is there in many modern labs,” he said.