THE number of people suffering from mental health related illnesses and seeking medication at Ingutsheni Central Hospital in Bulawayo has more than doubled in the past five months, an official has said.
The hospital’s clinical director, Dr Wellington Ranga, revealed in an interview that from November, instead of giving drugs to the “usual figure” of between 1 500 to 2 000 outpatients, as many as 5 000 people were flocking through Ingutsheni’s doors every month. This has resulted in drug stocks at the hospital depleting. Unlike other hospitals which charge for their services, Ingutsheni does not demand a fee for both drugs and services.
In the past, there had been stigma attached to getting one’s medication at the institution but as prices at local pharmacies skyrocket, many are now turning to Ingutsheni.
“That comes with its own problems. I say that because here medication is not paid for by the patients. So, people in town now know that we have sodium valproate and so things have now changed.
“From around November or December our numbers from pharmacies almost doubled. This is because there are some people who don’t like coming to Ingutsheni but buying some medication in town will cost you $300. Then that person hears that they only have to go to Ingutsheni outpatients and they’ll get it for free,” said Dr Ranga.
He said NatPharm, that supplies the drugs had also raised questions on the sudden increase in drug demand at the hospital.
“The number of outpatients we served used to be between 1 500 to 2 000 but now we’re going to as many as 5 000 people which is a significant increase. We are actually saying we are becoming victims of our own strategies because we were saying let’s keep these drugs but people have realised that getting them from Ingutsheni works. Even NatPharm has been asking how come our consumption rate has gone up all of a sudden. This is a dicey situation that we are trying to play around with. Do we deny some people and say go back and get your drugs where you used to get them? You can’t do that in mental health,” he said.
Dr Ranga said the institution had never experienced such a situation in its history.
“We have discussed it and it is something that we are seeing really as a phenomenon for the first time and so there’s no case study that we can turn to on how to respond to a situation like this. We are not sure because of the nature of mental health because if someone says they have epilepsy and they have been on phenobarbitone for the past 20 years then you can’t deny them that medication. We will continue giving them, but that will put constraints on us because we had worked out our budget, we thought the drugs would last for a certain time but with these ones we’re not so sure. They might run out,” he said.
Ingutsheni chief executive officer Mr Nyasha Chibvongodze, said although the economic pressures had made the acquisition of foodstuffs difficult, the hospital was still in a good state compared to other health institutions.
“As a country we did not have a good harvest last year and so the Grain Marketing Board is constrained in terms of maize availability. If we place an order of 250 bags of 50kg maize they can say we cannot do that at the moment, we can only supply you with 100 bags.
“The danger also comes in when you want to pay for the 250 bags upfront as they also can’t assure you of locking in that price until delivery. So, that’s where we stand. In terms of protein we are well stocked,” he said.
-State Media