The Ankaful Psychiatric Hospital in the Central Region has threatened to discharge over one hundred patients, due to the lack of funds to run the facility.
The Acting Clinical Coordinator of the Ankaful Psychiatric Hospital, Dr Emefa Dzide spoke about the distressing situation when members of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints made a donation to the hospital over the weekend.
[contextly_sidebar id=”6xbmSYnaI7GbfnzmTujO3RBCqOd4qntS”]According to her, the hospital is currently indebted to various food suppliers to the tune of over three million cedis.
She said, “first of all, feeding the patients is becoming a very great burden to us, even recently, we had to scramble together to look for money to buy meals for the patients because we are not getting the funds from government as we need to they promised us from the beginning of the year until now.”
“Even the little money they promised to give us we have still gotten our hands on it yet, so we are having difficulties, we owe suppliers for backlog of years and they are not willing to supply again and it is becoming very difficult,” Dr. Emefa continued.
She added that “Looking in the near future, maybe we would have to let all the patients go home because we can’t afford to feed or take care of them.”
She however made mention of the fact that she was not aware of the amount of money available in the budget that is supposed to be allocated to the hospital.
“I’m not sure about how much exactly is in the budget to give us but what I know is that, there was a time we went there and they promised us an amount of money. Even though it is a very small amount as compared to what we need to pay back all our creditors, even that small amount they were supposed to give to us hasn’t come.” She lamented.
Accra Psychiatric hospital closes down
In a related case, the Accra Psychiatric hospital was also November 2016, forced to release about 200 patients due to similar circumstances.
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By: Rita Mensah& Joseph Ackon-Mensah/citifmonline.com/Ghan