Authorities at the Accra Psychiatric Hospital say will they not allow the Accra Metropolitan Assembly to ‘dump’ so-called lunatics they intend to clear from the streets at the hospital.

The AMA says it will clear the streets of mentally ill people by the end of February and in time for the March 6 Ghana@50 celebrations.

But the already-crowded Psychiatric Hospital, commonly called ‘Asylum’, says it does not have the space to accommodate them, and will shut the gates if the AMA tried to bring them there.

The hospital authorities say some of the inmates’ conditions demand that they are housed individually and with the situation already precarious, they fear the inmates may be squeezed out if the AMA went head with the directive to clear the streets of the mentally ill and send them to the hospital.

Joy News correspondent Evans Mensah who visited the hospital said at the out-patients department, patients crowded the lobby as they waited for help.
The hospital has over a thousand currently and according to the Medical Director Dr. Akwasi Osei, the hospital is drastically understaffed.

It has three hundred nurses, but Dr. Osei says the hospital needs about 600 to be able to adequately take care of all the patients and any attempt by the AMA to bring in more patients from the streets will not be allowed.