The All People’s Congress (APC) has promised to establish a psychiatric hospital in all ten regions of the country as it outdoors what it describes as its “feasible and doable social intervention policies”.

The party believes mental health in the country has been “badly neglected with only three major health facilities” and deserves attention.

General Secretary of the APC Razak Opoku told ClassFMonline.com that if the party wins the December polls, “every year we will get about 20 in place so within our first four years we are talking about 80 district psychiatric health care facilities across the regions”.

For him, psychiatric units can be established at the various Community-based Health Planning and Services (CHPS) compounds in the interim as the party builds more facilities, especially psychiatric teaching hospitals, dedicated to mental conditions.

“We will be establishing regional ones and psychiatric teaching hospitals to be referral centres,” he promised.

In addition, he stated that the APC would seek to expand facilities at the district health hospitals to ensure “proper departments for conditions relating to the brain”, adding: “Psychiatric healthcare needs to be connected to the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).”

He believed a drive to have more members of the public enrol on the NHIS programme would result in increased premium payments, part of which would be used for the project.

In addition, the “budget for the mainstream hospital will be cut a little to support psychiatric healthcare”.

He said an APC government would collaborate with external donors and solicit Internally Generated Funds (IGFs) to have adequate funds for the implementation of the policy.