Issued by Ministry of Health
13 July 2006
Department of Health is making significant progress in promoting human rights culture in the provision of mental health services and has been decisive in dealing with facilities that do not comply with new norms and standards, said Health Minister Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang.
Minister Tshabalala-Msimang was speaking at an event to mark July as a Mental Illness Awareness Month at Weskoppies Hospital in Pretoria today.
She said all provinces have established Mental Health Review Boards which are independent bodies charged in terms of the Act to oversee care, treatment and rehabilitation of patients who were admitted without consent.
Health professionals have been trained on various new procedures and processes that were introduced by the Act and the Department is working with SAPS to develop an order that will direct the conduct of police in dealing with mental health patients.
“I can say with much confidence that we have been decisive in dealing with challenges of non-compliance to national norms and standards,” said Minister Tshabalala-Msimang.
She said at Fort Napier Hospital in KwaZulu-Natal, the Ministry of Health appointed a committee to investigate the allegations of abuse. Disciplinary measures were taken and matters relating to criminal justice system were referred to the SAPS.
The Ministry closed down the Libode Mental Health facility which is attached to St Barnabas Hospital in the Eastern Cape because of poor conditions and lack of compliance. Patients from that that facility were transferred to Umtata Mental Health facility.
The Ministry shut down some sections of the mental health unit at George Mukari Hospital in Garankuwa and transferred patients to Weskoppies hospital. While there have been much improvements in the infrastructure at George Mukari, there is need to put up proper toilet facilities for the seclusion rooms.
“In each case of lack of compliance, provinces have been requested to urgently mobilise resources to improve compliance including revitalisation of the facility. A good example was at Town Hill Hospital in KwaZulu-Natal where major revitalisation work was done to improve compliance with norms and standards within a few months,” said Minister Tshabalala-Msimang.
She said there are challenges of human resources that need to be tackled particularly relating to the availability of forensic psychiatrists. Forensic psychiatric observation is an intensive work requiring specialist skills.
“As part of the implementation of the Human Resources Plan for Health, we are engaging with institutions of higher learning to find measures to attract people into specialising in forensic psychiatry. We need to find measures to make this field of study and practice attractive to young psychiatrists and increase capacity of universities to produce more of these specialists.
“While we seek long-term solutions to this challenge, we are working on establishing more efficient means of observation to enable forensic psychiatrists to form an opinion much quicker on whether a person referred by courts is fit to stand trial,” said Minister Tshabalala-Msimang.
Weskoppies Hospital is one of the facilities that are at the forefront in complying with the new era introduced by the Mental Healthcare Act. The hospital has complied with most of the minimum requirements for mental health services as we have seen during our visit here. The facility also have complaints mechanism, which enables patients and interested parties to raise issues relating to service delivery. These are issues that now and again get reported in the media mainly because there is an opportunity to report and complaints are being dealt with.
Contact: Sibani Mngadi @ 0827720161