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Arua, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Patients at Arua Regional Referral Hospital Mental Health department are struggling to get adequate service due to the severe shortage of medical workers at the unit.
Currently, the unit has five nursing staff, three psychiatric clinical officers and one psychiatric doctor who attend to more than twenty patients daily. The unit is supposed to have ten nurses, six clinical officers and at least two psychiatric doctors. Last month alone, at least 413 outpatients visited the unit and 70 inpatients were admitted according to records at the facility.
Regina Ayikoru, whose daughter is mentally ill, told Uganda Radio Network that she has been coming to the health unit for the past three days but her daughter has never been attended to.
Meanwhile, Bako Rose, who is attending to her son at the facility says patients who come to the facility often have to wait for more than three hours to get attention due to the few number of staff at the unit. She has appealed to government to recruit more staff at the facility in order to improve service delivery at the unit.
Vito Odaga, the senior assistant nursing officer confirms the challenge, while noting that the shortage of staff does not only affect the mental health unit alone but other departments of the hospital as well.
The unit serves patients from Arua, Madi-Okollo, Nebbi, Pakwach, Zombo, Maracha, Terego and Yumbe districts as well as receiving patients from the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo.
Dr. Rita Binduru, the in-charge of the unit, says that that the unit receives a high number of patients every day who should be attended to, but since there are few staff, some often remain unattended to.
Dr. Binduru says that they often rely on intern students from Muni university and other health training institutions to temporarily attend to the overwhelming number of patients who seek treatment at the unit.
The rampant substance and drug abuse among the youths in the West Nile region has been blamed for the surging number of mental cases at the mental health unit.
According to Dr. Pontius Apangu, the principal health officer for Arua city, there is urgent need to stop the cultivation and sell of substances like mairungi, as one of the lasting solutions.
Records at the unit indicate that drug or alcohol induced psychosis is the leading cause of admission at the unit contributing to over 50% of the total admissions. The commonly abused substance especially among the youth in the region include khat, locally known as mairungi, marijuana and alcohol.
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