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
South African Police Service (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 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 facilities 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.
Enquiries:
Sibani Mngadi
Cell: 082 772 0161
Issued by: Ministry of Health
13 July 2006
