Many internet cafes do not equate to good internet availability…
It is now Thursday 6 July and I still haven’t been able to post the notes I have written for the past week. Everywhere seems to have an internet connection, yet none of them work when I’ve tried. Very frustrating. I just posted the last week's notes after trying so many internet cafes and Basic Needs' own network. I'm not sure how easy it will be to continue keeping this updated!
We returned from the long weekend at the Volta Dam on Monday (it was public holiday here) and spent the day on Tuesday with Lance who runs the Basic Needs operation in Ghana. We spent much of the day talking about what we have seen in the last week and what that means for our terms of reference.
The result was a marked-up engagement letter with our two objectives:
1. Developing a strategic plan for Basic Needs Ghana through to 2010. They wish to turn Ghana into a ‘West African Hub’ which covers other countries such as Nigeria, and we need to consider if/how this can be done.
2. The organisation drew up a Community Mental Health and Development plan in 2002 in conjunction with the Ghana Health Service. This is the approach that Basic Needs works in conjunction with the government to move mental health care provision closer to the community (rather than being solely served by Ghana’s three psychiatric hospitals). We need to revisit this, in conjunction with the government, to ensure it is relevant to new Mental Health legislation that will pass through parliament later this year. This can then be used in setting the agenda for the government, the donor community and non-governmental organisations (such as Basic Needs) on how best to provide care to the mentally ill in their communities.
Why are we doing this? It has become clear during our visit that mental illness encompasses a very wide spectrum of illnesses, from those who are schizophrenic, mentally retarded, epileptic, to those who are suffering from clinical depression or may be recovering from substance abuse. Earlier this week I read an amazing statistic: by 2020, mental illness will account for 15% of the global burden on disease, by which time depression will disable more people than AIDS, heart disease, traffic accidents and wars - combined. It is clearly a big issue which is not being addressed with the same priority as infectious diseases.
We have spent a week’s induction in Accra, the capital, so yesterday we started the next leg of our work when we flew up to Tamale, which is the main city in the Northern Region of Ghana.
This region is the largest by land mass, but also very rural. Tamale itself has seen troubles in recent times, following the beheading of Yakubu Andani II, a local traditional chief, in March 2002. Five of his sub-chiefs and 28 other family members were abducted by members of the rival Abudu clan, which resulted in local infighting. Tamale itself was subject to a curfew from midnight to 4am, but this has now been lifted.
We will be spending a couple of weeks in this region as the issues facing the mentally ill are very different from the south: because the region is poor, many areas are remote and have little road access, and there is no psychiatry hospital, the provision of mental health care has to be within the community by necessity. However, just getting to those communities is going to be a challenge. Next week we have a number of trips which involve long journeys in a Nissan Patrol 4WD over dirt roads just to get to some of the districts in the region. Time to charge the ipod…
Yesterday evening, after work, the Basic Needs team took us to see some traditional dancing and drumming. It was awesome – I’ve never been bothered with African dancing etc, but the energy of the drums was amazing. One of the guys said they do drumming lessons in the evening, so we may go there after work today. Robbie has professed himself to be an expert in African drumming, so we are going to take the lead from him!
We returned from the long weekend at the Volta Dam on Monday (it was public holiday here) and spent the day on Tuesday with Lance who runs the Basic Needs operation in Ghana. We spent much of the day talking about what we have seen in the last week and what that means for our terms of reference.
The result was a marked-up engagement letter with our two objectives:
1. Developing a strategic plan for Basic Needs Ghana through to 2010. They wish to turn Ghana into a ‘West African Hub’ which covers other countries such as Nigeria, and we need to consider if/how this can be done.
2. The organisation drew up a Community Mental Health and Development plan in 2002 in conjunction with the Ghana Health Service. This is the approach that Basic Needs works in conjunction with the government to move mental health care provision closer to the community (rather than being solely served by Ghana’s three psychiatric hospitals). We need to revisit this, in conjunction with the government, to ensure it is relevant to new Mental Health legislation that will pass through parliament later this year. This can then be used in setting the agenda for the government, the donor community and non-governmental organisations (such as Basic Needs) on how best to provide care to the mentally ill in their communities.
Why are we doing this? It has become clear during our visit that mental illness encompasses a very wide spectrum of illnesses, from those who are schizophrenic, mentally retarded, epileptic, to those who are suffering from clinical depression or may be recovering from substance abuse. Earlier this week I read an amazing statistic: by 2020, mental illness will account for 15% of the global burden on disease, by which time depression will disable more people than AIDS, heart disease, traffic accidents and wars - combined. It is clearly a big issue which is not being addressed with the same priority as infectious diseases.
We have spent a week’s induction in Accra, the capital, so yesterday we started the next leg of our work when we flew up to Tamale, which is the main city in the Northern Region of Ghana.
This region is the largest by land mass, but also very rural. Tamale itself has seen troubles in recent times, following the beheading of Yakubu Andani II, a local traditional chief, in March 2002. Five of his sub-chiefs and 28 other family members were abducted by members of the rival Abudu clan, which resulted in local infighting. Tamale itself was subject to a curfew from midnight to 4am, but this has now been lifted.
We will be spending a couple of weeks in this region as the issues facing the mentally ill are very different from the south: because the region is poor, many areas are remote and have little road access, and there is no psychiatry hospital, the provision of mental health care has to be within the community by necessity. However, just getting to those communities is going to be a challenge. Next week we have a number of trips which involve long journeys in a Nissan Patrol 4WD over dirt roads just to get to some of the districts in the region. Time to charge the ipod…
Yesterday evening, after work, the Basic Needs team took us to see some traditional dancing and drumming. It was awesome – I’ve never been bothered with African dancing etc, but the energy of the drums was amazing. One of the guys said they do drumming lessons in the evening, so we may go there after work today. Robbie has professed himself to be an expert in African drumming, so we are going to take the lead from him!
posted by Zub at 6:12 pm
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