Campama Crisis "Resolved"

The Independent (Banjul)
NEWS
July 16, 2004
Posted to the web July 16, 2004
Banjul

The hydra-headed crisis caused by a chronic shortage of drugs for patients
at the Campama Psychiatric home has been "promptly" resolved, culminating
in the re-admittance of mental cases again, according to the Royal Victoria
Teaching Hospital's Public Relations Officer.

Baboucarr Ngum told The Independent Wednesday, that the drug shortage
crisis, which had so seriously hamstrung operations at the country's only
mental home, is now a thing of the past as the arrival of new drugs are
distributed.

Ngum said the problem of the psychiatric home has been one of congestion,
as staff at the centre literally struggled to come to terms with the
inherent problems in balancing the dearth in drugs and the paucity of staff
to deal with inmates, some of whom were released to mainstream society in a
desperate bid to decongest the hitherto crowded mental home. According to
the PRO, several consignments of drugs including modecate had arrived in
the country, as details of the Campama crisis were being made public
knowledge. "It is true that we have been encountering problems in dealing
with the drug shortage, but the situation has assumed normalcy. It should
also be borne in mind that the drugs are very expensive and can only be
procured from the UK and other European countries. What is more, the number
of patients we routinely have to deal with has been swelling without let
and this had brought its own problem revolving around our ability to cope
with the situation" Ngum expostulated.

The RVTH official sought to calm the affrighted nerves of relatives of
people with mental cases, by making reassuring pronouncements about the
readiness of the RVTH to deal with recurrent problems about drugs, which
can only be procured from far away Europe and the administrative
bottlenecks caused by the inadequacies of a skeletal Campama staff, who
have been at their wit's end to deal with the crisis.

"We are now restructuring the Campama operation scheme to make it more
responsive to the growing demand for the attention of mental cases.

There is no grain of truth in the assertion that the RVTH do not care about
what happens at the Campama. What is true is that we as Gambians and as
human beings are very passionate about conditions at the psychiatric home.
If that will serve to show how sincerely we take the Campama issue I must
tell The Independent the clockwork frequency and unfailing regularity of my
visits there to keep track of the situation there' he added.

Campama Psychiatry's dearth of medicinal drugs to treat its mentally
deranged patients reached crisis point recently with violent inmates, being
allowed to leave the country's only mental home, which was at its wits' end
in dealing with the chronic shortage.

Reports had alluded to the fact that the overwhelming majority of inmates
with varying degrees of mental imbalance have been released back to the
community as Campama grapples with the chronically acute shortage of drugs
to calm violent fits. Reasons ascribed for freeing the inmates included the
chronic lack of medicines and what close relatives of some of the inmates
called the skeletal staff who have been "mentally and physically
overstretched" to look after over a hundred patients.

According to these reports only a handful of inmates were left in the
mental home, whose personnel recently made plaintive calls to the Royal
Victoria Teaching Hospital for the provision of drugs to treat its
neglected inmates. Due to the frequency of violence among inmates at
Campama, the demand for nerve-calming drugs has been of permanent
significance.

"We understand and accept these reasons for these inmates being let out,
but imagine the danger these sick people pose to the society, women and
children especially. Many of these runaway Campama inmates can be seen
roaming our markets and other public places. Are we to sit and wait for
another disaster like the one which happened in Bakau, where two people
were killed by a mentally deranged man just months ago" a concerned
relative of one Campama inmate who wished to remain anonymous was quoted as
lamenting.

According to him, his brother who was mentally imbalanced had escaped from
the Campama Psychiatric home months ago and was rehabilitated by his
family, since at the time he had not shown any propensity for violence and
was not therefore an apparent threat to anyone.

"However, recently he has been quite violent and dangerous even for his own
relatives. He is capable of doing harm and we took him back to Campama for
him to be readmitted. To our utter surprise, we were told that the only
mental home in the country no longer takes in patients. It left us
completely flabbergasted," he explained, lamentably adding; "many other
mentally disturbed patients have been allowed to leave the mental home with
serious risks to society. Something must be done about it".

He said the only positive response by the Department of State for Health
should be the requisitioning of medical materials and medicines, which
would see patients who have been allowed to rejoin society but still with
mental deficiencies to be readmitted at the mental home.

This development comes days after The Independent reported what it called
the "cataclysmic" level to which the acute shortage of drugs to treat
patients at the Campama hospital has reached. This dreary situation had
prompted the psychiatric centre to stop admitting patients with advanced
stages of mental illnesses as the RVTH allegedly failed to respond
positively. Overwhelmed by the situation senior hospital staff thought the
only prudent measure at their disposal was to suspend the admittance of
more patients at the centre in the interim as they struggle to deal with
the dearth in drugs, which according to sources the Royal Victoria Teaching
Hospital is not in a position to provide.

Sources claimed that the decision not to admit patients was effected since
May when the situation aggravated.

A senior official at the psychiatric centre who wished to remain anonymous
told The Independent that they had written to the RVTH management,
communicating to them their concerns over the chronic lack of drugs there.
He said the dispatch had conveyed their request for the teaching hospital
to supply the psychiatric centre with drugs to deal with mental cases in
the short term. The conditions in Campama are getting worse every day, they
added.

"A lot of patients are still being brought in although we are at pains to
let the world know that little or no drugs are available to treat them, and
we are facing problems to deal with them" he had added. He also accused the
RVTH of being negligent about conditions at the Campama, with its
management team hardly even making routine inspections of the psychiatric
centre, the only mental home in the country. "This can only amount to the
fact that the RVTH does not care about what happens at the Campama" he
protested.

Another anonymous Campama staff also decried the state of the food being
made available to inmates, which he described as "very poor and unhygienic
diet". He said as a result patients hardly eat. The anonymous official
further revealed that even the beds of the hospital were full of bed bugs,
which makes it difficult for inmates to sleep.

"When we informed the RVTH management about these things they were never in
the habit of responding positively" he claimed, adding that the doors in
the hospital rooms are not in good shape, making it easy for people with
mental problems to slip out without the knowledge of the hospital
staff. "Two inmates were killed in motor traffic after they escaped from
the compound this way" he explained.



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