90-year old psychiatric hospital set for major renovation

Dar es Salaam.  The 90-year old national psychiatric facility, Mirembe Hospital which is located in Dodoma, is set to undergo major renovation as part of the government’s response to the rising cases of people with mental health disorders, the parliament heard on Tuesday.

The Deputy Minister for Health, Community Development, Gender, the Elderly and Children, Dr Faustine Ndugulile said over Sh900 million has been set aside to improve the services provided by the facility, including renovating its infrastructure.

Dr Ndugulile told the parliament that Mirembe Hospital, built by the German colonial administration in 1927, was one of the country’s major mental health facilities and it needed major attention at a time reports indicate that mental health cases were on the rise.

However, the deputy minister admitted that it was still difficult for the government to ascertain the number of people affected by various mental health disorders in the country.

“What we have are just estimates,’’ he said during the National Assembly when he was asked a question by a member of parliament for Morogoro South, Prosper Mbena, who sought to know what the government was doing to help mental health patients who have been reported to be wandering in streets without being given due attention.

Responding, Dr Ndugulile said the actual number of Tanzanians with mental health disorders is unknown but it's estimated to be 1 percent of the total population of Tanzania of 50 million people.

The medic, said more people than estimated, could be mentally unhealthy, as per the definition set by the World Health Organization’s that health is the state of the physical, mental and social wellbeing-not mere absence of disease.

However, he insisted   that the country's health system cannot establish everyone who is mentally ill but only relies on collecting data on those patients who report or are taken to mental health facilities.

"Only 48 percent of those who are mentally ill report to health facilities. 24 percent end up in the hands of traditional healers, the rest go to faith healers, and just a few are wandering on the streets," said Dr Ndugulile.

There are professional ways of identifying those who are mentally ill and keeping them in mental health facilities," he added, as he responded to the MP. Usually, mental health facilities largely rely on police reports and families of those affected.

He said the government was only able to allocate mental health specialists up to regional hospital level and efforts were ongoing to extend the services to district level.