MASAKA: At least 200 people who are mentally ill have come back to their psychiatric unit at the Masaka Regional Referral Hospital.
Dr. Nathan Onyach, the hospital director, has confirmed the development, saying it followed a complete reduction of Coronavirus Disease (COVID19) cases at the hospital.
When Kyabakuza Health Center III was built, the COVID-19 patients were moved there. It has been two years since the patients were moved there.
According to Onyach, the plans to return the patients kept shifting due to unavoidable circumstances. The hospital had planned to bring back the mentally ill patients in December 2020, hoping that the number of COVID-19 cases would have gone down. The situation got worse after there was a huge rise in admissions through 2021.
Onyach explains that they had no COVID patients at the unit by February 28, 2022, which gave them confidence to proceed with the plan.
A health worker at the psychiatric ward says the patients and caregivers are happy to return to what they call “home,” and they are settling in well.
He says that the unit has resumed normal operations and is busy attending to the patients.
As Lucia Nakaggwa, the family member and caretaker of a person with schizophrenia, tells it, they don’t have to pay for the transportation to Kyabakuza HCIII anymore.
She says this will help them see specialists at any time for mental health care services, adding that the patients were used to their original ward and environment before they were transferred to Kyabakuza.
The unit was commissioned in 2011 and was meant to admit 40 patients, but hospital authorities say that the number keeps on increasing, making it congested.
This specialised department receives patients with complicated cases from lower health units, hospitals, prisons, and off the streets. The staff further say that 70 percent of the patients are re-attendance cases for maintenance treatments, while 30 percent are new cases.
In 2018, the parliament of Uganda passed the Mental Health Bill 2014 into law. This is part of an effort to improve the treatment and care of people with mental illness in Uganda.