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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright © 2004 The Independent. All rights reserved. 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