The Port Reitz Hospital mental unit in Mombasa is in dire need of funds to support services offered at the facility.
The institution, which serves all the six counties in Coast region, has only one psychiatrist and is overwhelmed by the number of patients brought to the facility every day.
The facility, which has a capacity for 72 in-patients and over 200 outpatients, is the second biggest after Mathari Mental Hospital in Nairobi.
Mental health issues are on the rise at the Coast due to increased drug abuse and depression occasioned by loss of jobs as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Joseph Kanye, the officer in charge of Port Reitz Hospital mental unit, said they are understaffed and lack adequate funds.
He said the only available psychiatrist visits the facility twice a week (Tuesday and Thursday), and therefore cannot attend to all the patients.
Kanye said due to the condition of most mental health patients, they have a tendency of breaking the facility's resources, yet there are no funds to purchase replacements.
The centre is also experiencing a challenge with patients who have overstayed after their families failed to show up.
“ We have a patient from Garissa who has been with us for five years and has already recovered. We tried to trace the family, but all in vain,” Kanye said.
The facility does not receive the required support from the national government, according to Kanye.
“Mathari Hospital gets the biggest share in the budgetary allocation. The same hospital has programmes which we are supposed to be involved in order to better our services, ” he said.
Mombasa county Health executive Dr Khadijah Shikelly said that mental health issues are always allocated only 2 percent of the national health budget.
Shikelly said mental health cases have been on the rise, hence requiring good budgetary allocation.
“We need a policy from the national government which will support the mental health programmes,” Shikelly said.
“We are really pushing the national government to make this mental unit a hospital because we are getting more and more patients, especially during this time of Covid-19 pandemic.”
She said Kenya is still grappling with mental health inequality.
“When you look at the study done by the World Health Organisation, 75 to 95 percent of low and middle income countries cannot access mental services and this is where the problem is.”
Drug addiction in Mombasa has also been listed as one cause of mental health problems in the region.
According to Shikelly, about 90 per cent of the cases at Port Reitz are secondary complications of drug and substance abuse.
