Ghana's major psychiatric hospital faces closure due to lack of funds, logistics

Ghana's main Psychiatric Hospital in the national capital faces imminent closure due to lack of funds and logistics, the state-run Ghanaian Times reported here Thursday.

According to the report, the Accra Psychiatric Hospital has restricted patient admissions to critical and emergency cases due to lack of funds, food and some medical supplies.

It said companies that supplied the hospital with detergents, gloves, staple foods , fish and meat had also halted their supplies because it has not been able to pay a debt of about 41.1 million Ghana Cedis or 10,789,473.7 US dollars owed them since 2013.

The Head of the Mental Health Authority, Akwasi Osei, told The Ghanaian Times in Accra that the hospital would not be able to run its normal operations until government released the needed funds to the facility.

The authority, he said, had communicated to the Ministry of Health (MOH) about the current state of the hospital, saying he expected positive results within the shortest possible time before the situation got out of hand.

Osei said the hospital could still not fund its operations despite the levies it took from patients as a means to share half of the hospital's financial burden.

"Government, through the MOH, is supposed to cater for patients free of charge as per the mental health law, especially now that the Mental Health Authority does not have a funding mechanism," he said.

Osei stated that Ghana's two other mental facilities, the Pantang and Ankaful Psychiatric hospitals, also owed their suppliers about 3 million cedis or 789,473.7 dollars each.

A member of the Public Relations Directorate of the Accra Psychiatric Hospital, Emmanuel Febiri, said the hospital presently housed about 500 patients out of whom two thirds had been abandoned by their families.

The hospital, he said, tended to about 20 to 30 patients at its Out-Patient Department (OPD) daily, adding that the OPD was functioning normally but no new patients would be admitted.

He expressed concern about the deplorable state of the hospital saying "almost all roofs in this hospital are leaking, the electrical wirings have become very old and dangerous and patients are now being catered for with donations from benevolent institutions and individuals."

Febiri said the hospital had for the past two weeks relied on donations from the Flag Staff House, the Accra Metropolitan Assembly, Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa, and National Disaster Management Organization. Endit