Accra, April 19, GNA - Poor working conditions and lack of permanent psychiatry lecturers at the University of Ghana Medical School are deterring many medical postgraduate students from specialising in the field.

The absence of the Mental Health Law is also contributing to the negative image of psychiatry depriving the sector of benefits from government and other stakeholders.

At the moment, the Ministry of Health has only 15 consultants out of which 11 have retired from the service and are working in private hospitals. Three are inactive with only one actively working in the service.

Speaking in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in Accra, Dr Akwesi Osei, Acting Chief Psychiatrist of the Ministry of Health, said there were 25 doctors with various levels of knowledge of psychiatry assisting in the three psychiatry hospitals - Accra, Pantang and Ankaful.

He explained that the increasing number of patients in hospitals had overstretched health workers and hospital facilities.

"Last year, Accra Psychiatry Hospital recorded 44,000 patients, Ankaful recorded 35,000 and Pantang recorded 17,000 with only the few doctors attending to all of them."

Dr Osei said when Cabinet approved the Mental Health Law currently at the minister's level, it would ensure that every regional hospital would have a Psychiatry Department to attend to all psychiatry cases in their locality to ease pressure on the three main hospitals.

He said there were only four psychiatry lecturers (two permanent - a Ghanaian and a Nigerian and two other Ghanaians on part-time) lecturing at the medical school and expressed the hope that the number would increase to six by September this year. A lecturer handles a class of 86 students.

He said medical students during their attachments witnessed the congestion and the pressure under which their senior colleagues worked and "they feel so depressed that it puts them off to further specialise at the postgraduate level".

He explained that the Bill when passed into law would force government and other stakeholders to open their arms to assist to change the phase of psychiatry in the country, making it one of the best places to work and teach just as was being done abroad.

Dr Osei said the Ghana College of Physicians and Surgeons had introduced postgraduate programmes to train more psychiatrists to beef up the number.

The psychiatry nursing training schools had also increased their intake from a little over 100 to 200 and would produce about 400 nurses next year, he said.

In another development, Ghana Mental Educators in the Diaspora, a global diasporal volunteering initiative, are assisting in teaching medical students in Accra and Kumasi and postgraduate students in psychiatry.

Dr Victor Doku, coordinator of the Ghana Mental Educators in the Diaspora, in an interview with GNA noted that most of the lecturers in Ghana had retired, thus creating shortage and high workload on the few lecturers.

He explained that Ghanaian psychiatry doctors in the Diaspora had since 2002 been organizing themselves every year to assist in lecturing from March to April. They comprise nurses, psychiatrists and occupational therapists.

The doctors are partnering the Ministry of Health and the local doctors for its success. About 10 -20 such doctors come to Ghana every year for this initiative and over 40 of them have been in the country to render services.

Dr Doku noted that the initiative was to let Ghanaians in the Diaspora appreciate the enormity of the problem and the need for them to assist once they also had their training from the same training institution.

"A lot of Ghanaian doctors are coming home and we are by this initiative urging them to use their holidays in the country to impart some knowledge to the students by way of lecturing and also discard the wrong impression given to psychiatry in Ghana." He expressed the hope that the number would increase in subsequent years and spread to other areas of health. 19 April 07