11 August 2008
Accra — The acting Psychiatrist of the Psychiatric Hospital in Accra, Dr. Akwasi Osei recently painted a gory picture of the state of psychiatric hospitals in the country. Speaking at a programme organized by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiatives in Accra recently, Dr. Osei said Ghana at the moment has only 14 instead of 70 consultant Psychiatrists, who are located in the southern sector of the country. Of the 14, 11 of them have already retired living only three.
Again, instead of 2000 Psychiatric nurses, the country can at the moment boast of only 600, leaving a deficit of 1400. The Chronicle finds this statistics given by Dr. Osei, especially his revelation that the few Psychiatrist doctors and nurses are concentrated in the southern half of the country very disturbing.
Everybody accepts that health plays an important role in the development of every country, therefore if the sector is decked with avalanche of problems that should be of concern to all Ghanaians. The Chronicle is aware that the government has been devoting substantial portion of our revenue to the health sector, but something ought to be done to increase this budgetary allocation.
Government must also take the necessary steps to offer high incentives to Psychiatrist doctors who will accept posting to the northern parts of the country. If possible, the government should increase their remuneration and benefits to entice more doctors to serve in the northern part of the country. Both government and opposition have accepted or acknowledged the wide development gap between the south and the north, therefore we do not think there will be any hullabaloo if government decides to double the pay of these doctors.
We also suggest that the Metropolitan, Municipal and District assemblies who have some of these psychiatric hospital sited in their territories to sponsor students to study nursing courses relevant to the subject, and come back to serve in these hospital, just as they are already doing by sponsoring students to Teacher Training Colleges, who come back to the community to teach at the end of their studies.
The Chronicle thinks that if this is done, the country would be on the way to solving the shortage of both doctors and nurses who handle psychiatric cases. We should not always be seen to be raising alarms without making the effort to find a lasting solution to the very problem we are complaining about.
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