Campama "Madness" Reaches Crisis Point

The Independent (Banjul)
NEWS
July 2, 2004
Posted to the web July 6, 2004
Banjul

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

Fresh reports reaching The Independent midweek allude to the fact that the
overwhelming majority of Campama inmates with varying degree of mental
imbalance have been released back to the community as Campama grapples with
the chronically acute shortage of drugs to calm violent fits of patients.
Reasons being ascribed for freeing the inmates include 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 are 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 lamented.

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 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 make 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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