Africa-Press – Uganda. The management of Masaka Regional Referral Hospital has brought back all the mental health patients to the psychiatric unit nearly two years after they were shifted to another location.
About 200 mental patients were transferred to Kyabakuza Health Centre III in June 2020 after the mental health unit at Masaka Regional Referral hospital was turned into a Covid- 19 treatment centre.
According to Dr. Nathan Onyachi, the hospital director, they decided to return mental health patients to their unit after spending several weeks without receiving Covid-19 patients at the facility.
“We have not registered any Covid-19 cases for close to three weeks. So, the management has decided that the mental health patients be returned to the hospital premises. For now, all services at the mental health unit will be offered here at the regional hospital, and the general public should be informed about this development,” he said in an interview on Wednesday.
However, Dr Onyachi said they have reserved some space at the psychiatric unit where Covid-19 patients can be managed in case they show up.
Dr Onyachi further noted that bringing back mental health patients to the facility is going to make access to mental health services easier and reduce overcrowding at Kyabakuza Health Centre III.
“Those mental health patients that required serious attention were transferred to Butabika National Referral Mental Hospital and their relatives were inconvenienced whenever they wanted to visit them, but now this challenge is going to be addressed,” he said
Dr Onyachi, however, raised concern over the increasing number of people with mental illness which he blames on challenges that resulted from the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic and domestic violence in society among other cases.
“Stress and anxiety that came with the two successive lockdowns after the outbreak of Covid-19 and people losing work and loved ones left a big number of people depressed and in turn developed mental illnesses which they are currently battling,” he added.
Dr Canaan Kateregga, the principal psychiatric clinical officer in charge of the mental clinic at the hospital, said reinstating the mental health unit at the hospital will help to decongest Butabika since Masaka will now be able to handle inpatients.
On average, the Masaka Hospital psychiatric unit receives 40 mental health-related cases daily; however the cases rose to 80 per day at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, but the situation has since stabilised, according to Dr Kateregga.
Globally, the World Health Organisation estimates that 10 percent of every population has suffered mental illness. This implies that 10 percent of Uganda’s 4.2 million people have suffered mental illness.
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