Acting Clinical Coordinator of Ankaful Psychiatric Hospital in the Central Region, Dr. Emefa Dadzie, has hinted that the inadequate financial support from the central government will force the hospital to discharge the mentally-ill patients who are receiving treatment at the facility in the near future.
Speaking to newsmen after receiving some donated items from the Church of Later Day Saint at Cape Coast, Dr. Dadzie, revealed that government’s inability to release funds since January 2017 has affected their operations.
Dr. Dadzie stressed that feeding of the inmates has become a great burden as creditors were unwilling to supply them foodstuff due to accumulated debts.
“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 added.
