The government will in the next few days release funds to the three major Psychiatric hospitals in the country, Accra, Pantang and Ankaful Hospitals to enable them run effectively.
Authorities at the Ankaful Psychiatric Hospital in the Cental region have threatened to release over 100 patients due to the poor financial status of the facility.
The hospital is currently indebted to suppliers of food and other items to the tune of over 3 million cedis, the hospital’s administrators have disclosed.
The Acting Clinical Coordinator of the Ankaful Psychiatric Hospital, Dr. Emefa Dadzie said government’s inability to release funds since January 2017 has affected operations of the hospital.
“First of all, feeding the patients, taking care of patients, is becoming a very great burden to us. Even recently, we had to scramble together to get money to buy a meal for a day 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 till now. Even the little money they promised to give us, we’ve still not received it yet so we are having difficulties,” she bemoaned.
“We owe suppliers backlog of years and they are not willing to supply again so it’s becoming very difficult. Looking in the near future, maybe, we will have to maybe let all the patients go home because we can’t afford to feed them. We can’t afford to take care of them. I’m not sure how much exactly is in the budget for us but what I know is that, we went there, 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 has still not come,” she disclosed after receiving donated items from the Church of Later Day Saint at Cape Coast.
But the Public Relations Oficer of the Ministry of Health, Robert Coudjoe has explained that the financial challenges facing the Ankaful Hospital is due to the delay on the part of the hospital managment in forwarding a document to the Ministry based on which funds are to be released.
He also stated that his checks reveal that the media has blown out of proportion the situation at the Hospital, eventhough he admitted that they are in some financial difficulties.
