European Union releases funds to mentally ill people

Wa, March 23, GNA - The European Union has released 750,000 Euros to Basic Needs, an NGO, to provide sustainable income generating activities for mentally ill persons whose conditions have improved in Accra, Northern, Upper East and Upper West regions within the next three years.

Additionally, Basic Needs would, this year, construct a 180 million-cedi psychiatric unit at the Regional Hospital in Wa to serve as a recreational centre for mentally ill people in the region, Mr Lance Montia, Executive Director of Basic Needs for the West African Sub-Region, said at Wa on Thursday.

Launching the Upper West Regional Chapter of the Alliance for Mental Health and Development, the second of its kind in the country, he said almost all resources in mental health spending in the country had been deployed on hospital-based care.

This neither met the policy intentions of government nor did it meet the population needs, since few mentally ill people were served as compared to the number of people that required treatment and support. Mr Montia said his organization would advocate for the provision of mental health services to be as close as possible to individual communities, which was one of the World Health Organization's 10 recommendations for mental heath services.

"Mentally ill people have a right to treatment and it should therefore be a significant part of mainstream health and development activity for any community anywhere".

He said mental illness now accounted for 12.3 per cent of the global burden of the disease and this was expected to rise to 15 per cent by the year 2020 and that inadequate global response to this rise as a major challenge.

Mr Ambrose Dery, the Upper West Regional Minster in an address read on his behalf, called on the Alliance to work in the best interest of the mentally sick people and fashion out programmes to involve them. If development was to be complete, he said, no section of the society should be left out and called for the re-examination of the stigmatisation of mentally patients as that often made it difficult for them to integrate into their families even when they were treated and stabilized.

Mr Peter Yaro, Programme Manager of the Northern Ghana Programme of Basic Needs, said there were presently 5,320 mentally ill people and 8,785 people with epilepsy in the Northern Ghana Programme area. He said 279 of these people who have stabilized conditions or had their symptoms reduced have gained credit through the funding from Basic Needs and their local NGO partners to enable them undertake income earning activities. 23 March 07