The nurses have gone home beaten out by patients like an abusive husband abuses a patient wife. The professional relationship between the mentally-ill patients and the nurses has turned sour because there is no money for medications to control aggressive patients.

On 21 October, an aggresive patient landed a nasty blow in the abdomen of a nurse, leaving her hospitalised at the Ridge hospital. A day after the nurses declared a strike dubbed ‘Run from danger’.

There is no money for diapers to clean nature’s mess or detergents and gloves. This is not really a demand for more money for the nurses, they are home because they want money for the hospital.

And so, nestled in noisy Accra traffic, the hospital is quiet – only as buzzy as a computer on hibernation.

Joy FM’s Kojo Yankson walked in to meet Dr. Pinnaman Apau, a consultant psychiatrist who has spent 10 years working here but has a resume that shows this is the last place she should be.

Dr. Pinnaman who heads the now nurseless-hospital could not hide her sympathy for her staff who have taken a decision to lay down their tools even if they are non-existent.

“They don’t have the basic logistics they need and they feel that the environment is not safe,” she said.

Director of the Accra Psychiatric hospital explains a point during a visit from the Second Lady, Mrs. Amissah Arthur

She explained that the signs had been on the wall for weeks now. For some weeks the nurses wrote asking for something to be done about a humiliating lack of the barest and the basic needs – detergents and gloves.

Feeding the patients was no longer a simple, get-into-the-room-and-give-them-food routine. You could be beaten and bloodied.

According to Dr. Pinnaman, the inmates sometimes get angry about the quality and quantity of food. They are not the only ones who are angry. The suppliers are angry, too. After supplying more than 4.1m cedis worth of goods and services since 2013, they have now deemed the hospital unworthy of credit.

The size of the debt is down to GH¢3.5million. But what is the size of the Accra Psychiatric hospital’s budget, Kojo Yankson wanted to know.

“We presented a budget of about GH¢7m….[but] the actual amount we got was around GH¢400,000,” Dr. Pinnaman said. And so  the hospital has been running on about GH¢400,00 for 500 in-patients, 37,000 out-patients for 12 months, she revealed.

Mental health is free and so there is no guaranteed source of funding except from government. The little monies the hospital generates is used to pay casual workers, fill the gas cylinders in the kitchen.

“We were kind of floating,” Dr. Pinnaman Apau balanced the truth with PR.

The Director explained that the GH¢7million budget covered things the hospital actually needs. ‘Even the GH¢7million is considerate’, she said.

According to web reports quoting Parliament’s Finance Committee Reports, the Press Secretariat at the Presidency was allocated GH¢ 400,000 for the year 2014. In that year like in previous years, the presidency overspent its budget.

What government fails to provide in cash, state organs like the Accra Metropolitan Assembly Assembly (AMA) and the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) steps in to provide in kind.

Photo: AMA donates to Accra Psychiatric hospital

NADMO is set up for disasters. And the unspoken implication of NADMO helping the Psychiatric hospital is that the level of deterioration and neglect of the mentally ill is a disaster.

Dr. Pinnaman explained the hospital lives on the barest minimum of GH¢7,000 a week, spent on perishables needed to prepare food for the 500 patients on admission.

“When you see the food they eat there is nothing to write home about”, her words appeared emotional.

And so at the Accra Psychiatric hospital, angry unmedicated patients have driven out angry unmotivated nurses, and angry suppliers have cut services to a hungry hospital, the cycle of anger is complete.

 

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