The act of commission or omission regarding the replenishment of essential stocks at the Accra Psychiatric Hospital is an act of irresponsibility underpinned by a dose of madness on the part of the political authorities charged with ensuring the efficient management of the facility.
Some of the patients are said to be out of the premises posing avoidable danger to pedestrians and themselves as they beg for alms; the food served them inadequate and their mental state still unstable.
Being the foremost mental health management facility in the country, the Accra Psychiatric Hospital should not be starved of the basic ingredients it requires to function.
We easily forget that mental wellness is an integral constituent of health.
Compromising the efficiency of the facilities charged with managing mental situations as being witnessed, is not only inappropriate but the shirking of a critical responsibility by the political authorities in whose scale of preference, the subject under review, is unfortunately at the bottom.
We are all susceptible to depression or other mental health related challenges requiring the attention of professionals managing such conditions.
That is when the importance of the efficient running of such facilities can be appreciated by the reckless and the irresponsible. Considering mental health as something belonging to others and not us, is a manifestation of the ignorance of this subject which is all-pervading.
That surely is one of the factors accounting for the near negligence of the Accra Psychiatric Hospital.
It is unsurprising that families of victims of depressions or schizophrenia would this day and age patronize prayer camps where their mentally challenged relations would be shackled and chained to tree trunks like prized slaves.
A certain Jamilatu Hussein, a staff psychiatric nurse of the facility, painfully painted a picture of a hospital in need of simple items such as gloves, disinfectants, syringes and more importantly drugs such as required to sedate dangerous patients.
When an irate patient charges at a nurse or doctor they remain at the mercy of these patients, as they face imminent death.
With no insurance to cover any injury suffered thereof, it can only be imagined the danger staff are exposed to under the current conditions.
That is how bad the situation at the hospital is as we compose this commentary.
Going through the reliefs the striking nurses are demanding as their strike action continues, we appreciate the sacrifice the nurses have put in over the past few years the country hardly hearing about their predicament.
Now there must be closure to this irresponsibility.
The risk of cross infection through direct contact with patients by nurses in the course of the primary management of the various cases at the facility is real. When we consider the fact that the nurses would foot the bills for medication should they be infected or even sustain injuries from aggressive patients, we shudder.
The President has said that he is unaware of the state of the Accra Psychiatric Hospital vis-a-vis the strike action by the nurses.
We are unsurprised about the President’s lack of knowledge about what is happening at the facility. He must be too busy with his campaign that such ‘unimportant’ issues do not come under his radar. In any case, he has an appointee whose assignment is to ensure that all health facilities, including the Accra Psychiatric Hospital function efficiently.
When you are walking in the street, be mindful about the possibility of a charging mentally challenged patient; his condition having relapsed because of shortage of basic drugs.