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| Mr. Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, Health Minister |
Ghana’s mental health sector could be in serious
jeopardy in a few years’ time owing to delays in the full implementation of measures
spelt out by the country’s mental health law.
Five years after
the passage of the country’s mental law, many key aspects of the legislation have
still not been achieved according to Knowledge and Communications officer of
BasicNeeds-Ghana, Frederick Nantogmah.
Speaking to Citi
News in an interview during a sensitisation workshop organised for 50
traditional and spiritual healers in Tamale, Mr Nantogmah said apart from the
establishment of the Mental Health Authority and the Mental Health Fund which
is yet to receive a single payment since creation, the rest of the other
equally important aspects of the law have still not been implemented.
He also mentioned
for instance, the absence of the Mental Health Board, Visiting Committee,
Legislative Instrument and Mental Health Tribunals as well as lack of
specialist care in all ten regions and medications for all public mental health
facilities in the country.
Mr. Nantogmah
however indicated that, in the absence of the full implementation of Act 846 of
2012, other development partners such as DFID, KOICA, Direct Relief and among
others have been giving government and its mental health facilities some form
of assistance.
“Through funding
agencies like DFID a lot has really been done. So right now, the mental health
authority has regional coordinators in all the places in all the regions and
these guys are helping out with managing mental health services across board.
“We have also
had the collaboration of other organisations like Direct Relief from the US who
have given us a lot of medicines to be able to distribute to five of the
poorest regions in Ghana. These have been the mainstay of psychotropic
medicines that have been used in a lot of these places to the extent that now
people with mental illness do not have to pay for medications a lot of the
time”, he disclosed.
Through the
intervention of the Korea International Cooperation Agency and Johnson and
Johnson, Mr. Nantogmah also noted that BasicNeeds undertook a number of
sustainable livelihood projects which ensured that persons with mental illness
or epilepsy were engaged in agriculture and other income generating activities
to be able to fend for themselves.
The workshop was
organised as part of the implementation of a 5-year (2013 – 2018) DFID mental health and development project being
implemented in all 26 Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs)
in the Northern Region.
The project seeks to increase
capacity of Ghana's Mental Health Authority to effectively and efficiently run
community based mental health services; and support 100,000 adults and children
of both sexes with mental health needs to access quality mental health services
within the proximity of their communities.
Considering the vital role that
traditional and faith-based healers play in the mental health sector, it has
become imperative to sensitise them on the mental health law and its
requirements as well as encourage practitioners to complement the services
provided by orthodox mental health service providers.
According to Sheik Alhaji Yakubu
Abdul-Kareem commended participants for the important role they were playing
and urged them to respect the human rights of their patients citing the protection
of their dignity and cease chaining them as well as bathing them with hot
herbs.
Deputy Chief Investigator at the Regional
Office of the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), Seidu
Alhassan, urged participants to play a crucial role in complementing the efforts
of the public health delivery system in the country.
He said the important contribution
traditional healers could make include but not limited lending themselves to
building their capacities in human right values and charters and work towards
bringing their standards and procedures to be in sync with the provisions in
the mental health act.
Mr. Alhassan also encouraged them to expose
practitioners who were perpetrating bad behaviours and open up for better
practices, improve their facilities and services and be humble enough to refer
cases with the chance of better treatment to psychiatric hospitals for
treatment.
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