Mental Hospital To Stop Admissions

The Accra Psychiatric Hospital will stop admissions from next week because of the precarious financial state of the medical facility, the Director of the hospital, Dr Akwasi Osei, has said.

He told The Mirror that the government made available some funds to the hospital to run its operations about three weeks ago but they were enough to cover feeding for only one month and would run out by the end of next week.

He said at that point, new admissions would cease. All psychiatric hospitals, he added, were allocated about ?220 million for feeding every month.

He said apart from the dire financial straits in which the hospital found itself, it did not have drugs to administer to patients and added that it was, therefore, not prudent to admit new patients.

He said even locally-manufactured drugs to treat patients were unavailable.

Dr Osei said the situation was the worst the hospital had faced in the last two years and stated that current developments pointed to the fact that the concerns of the hospital were not being appreciated by the Ministry of Health.

?We are arranging a tour of the hospital by the Minister of Health and may be after he inspects our facilities, he will appreciate our difficulties,? he added.

He said the hospital had no money to pay its debtors, adding that the debtors had been showing up at the hospital daily for the money owed them.

Dr Osei said some members of the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) visited the hospital about three months ago and expressed disappointment at the fact that the commission was unable to bring to the fore the deplorable conditions there as they did about the prisons.

?The conditions here are as deplorable as they are at the prisons and the CHRAJ officials acknowledged that when they came here. I am, therefore, surprised that they did not harp on them as they did after visiting the prisons,? he added.

About a month and a half ago, Dr Osei told newsmen that the hospital would stop the admission of patients in the next few days if the government did not provide it with funds.

He added that the hospital would be forced to discharge some of its in-patients, since it was under serious financial constraints.

About a week later, the government provided it with a lifeline by releasing some funds to enable it to carry out its activities.