Ghana’s Psychiatric hospitals face imminent closure as DFID withdraws funding.

By Papisdaff Abdullah

The Chief Executive Officer of Ghana Mental Health Authority (GHA), Dr Akwasi Osei is warning of great calamity in the country’s mental health system in the event the Department for International Development (DFID) withdraws its support of the Authority.

The DFID’s support for the GHA and by extension the country ’s three psychiatric hospitals comes to an end June this year—a situation Dr Osei warned will cripple entire mental health delivery system.

“So, if this support comes to an end then we will really not have any money to fall on.  Indeed what DFID is saying is that if we have any monies left unspent we need to return it and again the programme that we have is such that we are not likely to have any monies left.

“So, if the month comes to an end and we do not have any monies to let us continue to survive…to exist we will be forced to shut down and that’s the stark reality,” he lamented.

As a result, he added the hospitals in the next few days will “be forced to decide that either they shut down, in other words, they will not be admitting anybody, or they go back fully into cash and carry”offloading the cost of care to the patients.