WHO calls for increased spending on mental health

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has urged governments and professionals to highlight the plight of mentally impaired people living in Africa, where their condition is often misunderstood or left untreated. Their comments followed a conference on mental health in Africa last week. Participants attending the four-day meeting in Harare, where the World Health Report 2001 was launched, said mental illness did not get the required governmental attention and assistance that it deserved, yet it affected more than 450 million people globally. In many African countries and societies it was still taboo to talk about mental illness because of the risks of stigmatisation, participants heard. Delegates from 15 African countries and others from WHO Headquarters in Geneva, called for the creation of organisations that could assist mental patients in their respective countries - similar to groups who speak on behalf of people living with HIV/AIDS. At the moment, only a handful of countries globally have associations concerned with the plight of mentally impaired people. "It's not just a resource issue, it's also about combating ignorance and working through cultural beliefs," Custodia Mandlhate, WHO regional adviser for mental health told IRIN on Wednesday. The participants from Algeria, Angola, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Liberia, Mozambique, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe and other African countries would also lobby their governments to contribute at least 10 percent of the health budget for mental illness, Mandlhate added. Most of the participants said their governments only allocated one percent or less of the national health budget to mental illness. There were calls for people suffering from depression, epilepsy and any form of mental disorders to be treated within their communities or family environments rather than in psychiatric institutions. Participants agreed to mobilise resources in their respective countries for the benefit of mental patients. The participants also agreed to train a multi-disciplinary team for intervention in emergency situations. "There were also calls for the integration of mental illness in the national health package," Mandlhate said.