The Ministry of Health will soon launch a pilot substance abuse treatment programme at the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPHC) and plans to extend to it other public hospitals in due course.
This pilot programme is expected to come on stream even as the first women’s treatment centre finally becomes a reality in March this year at Triumph, East Coast Demerara.
According to a Ministry of Health official, the ministry will work with the Salvation Army and the Phoenix Rehabilitation Centre to strengthen their treatment programmes. The Salvation Army will soon benefit from a $5 million grant as was promised by President Bharrat Jagdeo. Phoenix will be responsible for setting up the women’s centre which is being funded by the US Government and the Catholic Relief Services with the ministry integrally involved.
The ministry’s pilot treatment programme will be the first to be publicly managed as in the past all rehabilitation programmes for substance abuse – all of which were for men only – were provided privately.
Meanwhile, the health promotion centre which Minister of Health Dr Leslie Ramsammy had told this newspaper about last week is up and running and it is through this unit that the treatment programme will be implemented. A major function of the unit, the minister had said, was to alert people to the dangers that result from the use of alcohol, tobacco and illicit drugs.
He had said while the centre’s objective would be to eradicate the use of tobacco and narcotics, the same approach would not be taken for alcohol use; rather it would advocate restraint and youth abstention. The unit will launch its first programme in that light next week in Georgetown in more than one secondary school.
It is hoped that all of the above would assist in reducing the spiralling suicide problem in Guyana as the new unit falls under the mental health programme introduced by the ministry. A release from the ministry earlier this week had stated that in collaboration with the National Suicide Prevention Committee and technical partners it will be aggressively confronting suicide, which it said is the number one cause of death among people aged 15-35 years.
In the release, the minister said that for the first time the budget for mental health, which never exceeded $100 million, is expected to increase by more than 100%. The minister promised that this year, the early diagnosis and treatment of depression would be priorities since depression is a causative factor for suicide.
In this regard, the ministry has organised training for health care providers and for the public and this, Ramsammy said, will enable health care providers to detect early signs of depression and make early referrals. The training, the release said, will also include a community component so that members of various communities across the country, including families, school teachers, employers and faith-based organisation, will be able to detect early signs of depression and other factors of unstable mental health.
On Thursday, the Pan-American Health Organisation (PAHO) presented equipment to the ministry as part of its continuing support for the implementation of the Guyana Mental Health Policy Plan. The organisation’s support, according to the release, is aimed at building the capacity of the mental health unit to train primary health care workers in mental health care. The presentation was made by PAHO-WHO Representative Dr Kathleen Israel at the organisation’s office.
Meanwhile, Chairman of the Suicide Prevention Committee Prakash Gossai indicated that Regions Five and Six would establish voluntary committees by next Tuesday, while a similar committee established in Region Two since last year March has been working. The committee, comprising concerned citizens, social workers, teachers and medical doctors, has visited secondary schools along the Essequibo Coast and hosted education and awareness sessions with parent-teachers associations. The committee has also begun house-to-house visits to counsel families that have lost loved ones to suicide as well as those who had family members who attempted suicide.
