The management of Accra Psychiatric Hospital has successfully repatriated the first batch of 30 cured inmates out of the 600 due for repatriation by the end of June this year.

The exercise which is to be conducted on regional basis, started from Greater Accra Region and its environs on Wednesday, January 19.Dr Akwesi Osei, Chief Psychiatrist of Ghana Health Service, disclosed this to the Ghana News Agency on an inspection tour to some of the facilities at the hospital in Accra on Friday.

Facilities toured included the wards for men and women, the laboratory, VIP ward and a special school for the mentally retarded. He explained that all the patients were taken to their homes, except for five patients whose families came for them, while two could not locate their homes due to old age and the development of their localities.

Dr Osei said management had arranged for regular check-ups by the community psychiatrics to monitor the exercise in their communities. He said some of the families were happy to re-unite with their relatives after a long time and expressed the hope that this would continue to make them fully integrated into the society. Dr Osei noted that the current population of the hospital was about 1,200 but the institution was built to accommodate 600 inmates, saying by the end of the exercise the appropriate number would be maintained.“The next batch of patients will go home in two weeks time,” Dr Osei said.

He announced that government had released money for the construction of a morgue for 80 corpses at the hospital, adding that this could also be commercialized to generate income. Mr Ebenezer Krampah Aidoo, Biomedical Scientist in charge of the hospital’s laboratory, in an interview with the GNA, appealed for more laboratory equipment to enhance effective investigation into the cases of mental patients. “Staffing is one of our major problems at the hospital laboratory because of the stigma associated with psychiatry,” he said.

Mr Isaac Benjamin Roosevelt Gadotor, Headmaster of the Accra Psychiatric Hospital Special Schools for the Mentally Retarded, said the aim of the institution was to address severe and profound attitudes of mental patients. He said most of the patients who were children, could not speak and that it would require patience to deal with them.

Mr Gadotor appealed to corporate institutions and individuals to assist management of the school by providing infrastructure to cater for the inmates and to develop their skills to make them self-sufficient later in life.