Goaso (A/R)-Ghana, April 18, GNA – Dr Joana Ansong, the National Programme Officer of World Health Organisation (WHO) Ghana Office has reiterated the need for stakeholders in the Ahafo region to work together to improve mental health services delivery.
She said mental health and its related drivers needed to be addressed holistically, hence, the need for the support of everyone to achieve the desired results.
Dr Ansong made the call in her address at the opening of a three-day Ahafo Regional Health Directorate’s inception meeting for the Ghana WHO’s Director-General’s Special Initiative for Mental Health (D-G’s SIMH) at Goaso in the Ahafo Region.
Dr Tedros Adhanom the WHO Director-General, in 2021 set up the D-G’s-SIMH.
Launched in July 2022, the D-G’s SIMH is a five-year project funded by WHO to support system transformation and scale up mental health services to attain Universal Health Coverage and ensure access to quality and affordable care for mental health conditions in 12 priority countries.
It is intended to achieve the highest standard of mental health and well-being to ensure that 5.2 million more Ghanaians have access to integrated, quality, person-centred mental health care that rights were upheld.
The programme in Ghana is being implemented in the Savannah, Western North, Oti and Ahafo regions.
Dr Ansong said mental health continued to be a priority for WHO with the aim for everyone to achieve the highest standard of mental health and well-being, saying as part of the activities under the initiative, a four-year country work plan had been developed with stakeholders.
She said the initiative would also contribute to increasing service coverage for severe mental health conditions by 50 per cent and reducing suicide mortality by 15 per cent.
Mr James Gariba, the Regional Mental Health Coordinator said as part of their activities to promote mental health and well-being, the region in 2022 held 97 durbars, visited 144 educational institutions to give mental health talks, 1,040 homes and conducted 3,703 mental health talks and 337 outreach programmes.
He said the new cases recorded in 2022 were 752, new cases through active case search 111, voluntary treatment 2,085, involuntary treatment, 596, post-partum psychosis, 27 and attempted suicide 20.
Mr Gariba said in the quest to strengthen mental health services delivery in the region they were faced with challenges such as weak structural capacity for district mental health focal persons, insufficient supply of programmed psychotropic drugs, insufficient funding for mental health activities.
Others he mentioned were inadequate capacity building for mental health officers in the region, insufficient logistics like BP apparatus, thermometer, motorbike to enhance mobility for mental health activities and brain drain/low-capacity building.
Mr Gariba, however, said the region had adopted strategies to strengthen the integration of mental health, engaging non-governmental organisations and corporate bodies with proposals for support.
The rest are to liaise with stakeholders to involve mental health officers in other areas of training, encourage the integration of mental health into mainstream care and lobby for an increase in study leaves quota for mental health nurses.
