The indefinite strike by nurses at the Accra Psychiatric Hospital is taking a heavy toll on the health facility, forcing management to consider discharging about 200 patients.
Patients, who are still under observation at the various wards, will have to go home in the coming days because the government has failed to provide the needed consumables for their treatment.
The move is to lessen the burden of the few doctors who are treating the patients at the facility following the total withdrawal of the services of the nurses earlier this week.
The nurses began an indefinite strike on Monday to protest against poor working conditions at the hospital and the prolonged shortage of basic logistics such as gloves, spirit, dressing solutions, facemasks, plaster, sterile cotton and gauze, detergents, among others, to carry out their professional duties.
They said the lack of logistics exposes them to unnecessary risks and attacks by aggressive patients.
A doctor at the facility, who spoke to a local radio station in Accra, said that “although the discharge of patients is not new to the health facility, now we want to do it on a bigger scale because the nurses are not at the psychiatric wards.”
The doctor noted that before patients will go home, we would visit the wards to check the conditions of the inmates before any recommendation to discharge them will be made.”
The hospital has already contacted the relatives of patients, who are well enough to come for them while transportation arrangements are being made for patients whose relatives do not show up.
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Mental Health Authority, Dr. Akwasi Osei, said measures have been put in place for community psychiatric nurses to monitor the inmates who will be released.
President John Dramani Mahama indicated that he is not aware of the strike action being embarked on by the nurses of the Accra Psychiatric Hospital.
“No it has not come to my attention, but I do know that the area of mental health is one of the areas that we need to focus attention. We passed the mental health bill and government is committed to its implementation,” President Mahama told Sunrise Radio in the Eastern region on Tuesday.
“We will take immediate steps to resolve the issue at the Accra Psychiatric Hospital and I am going to call the Minister of Health after this programme to see what the issues are and see how we will resolve them,” he declared.
By Jamila Akweley Okertchiri