As Nigeria joins the rest of the world to commemorate World Mental Health Day, the Federal Government of Nigeria has created modalities to improve mental healthcare services in the country.
The Minister of Health, Dr Osagie Ehanire made the statement in Abuja, the nation’s capital while briefing newsmen on the efforts of Nigeria Government in seeing that the federal ministry of health in collaboration with relevant stakeholders implement policies that will give access to quality mental health among all Nigerians.
The Minister said that most health conditions can be effectively treated at low cost but the gap between people needing care and those without access to health care remains substantially wide and effective treatment coverage remains low.
“This necessitates an increased investment on all fronts Mental health awareness to increase understanding and reduce stigmatisation of mental illness and to increase access to quality mental health care and effective treatment.
“By ensuring this, the objectives of good mental health service are achieved in Nigeria, the federal ministry of health in partnership with private health stakeholders said that it has fully prepared to launch the National Emergency Medical Service scheme to reduce the sudden mortality rate in the country.”
The Chairman Technical Committee on National Emergency Medical Service scheme, Dr. Felix Ogedengbe said that it is very important for Nigeria to join the health system of developed countries where there is a National emergency medical service to attend emergency patients in case of accident, fire outbreak and serious sickness that requires emergency attention.
Dr. Ogedengbe said there is three digit number to call, 112 for emergency ambulance for urgent medical services in order to promote quality mental health service in the country
“People always loose their lives because of the absence of emergency medical service we lack in our country, to this we discover that there is high mortality rate in the country and our aim is to bring it down by providing the national emergency medical service to Nigerians. We have a significant gap in tertiary, secondary and primary healthcare delivery, the emergency health care service becomes more important to fill in the gap where patients will be given emergency medical services attention and save their lives and that is why we want to launch the pilot scheme.
“Some Private and Public hospitals have been selected to commence the scheme by 14 October this year and Abuja the Federal capital has been select as the pilot face of the scheme, the twelve states have been selected, two each from the six geo-political zones in the country.”
The aim of the scheme is to promote quality healthcare service and reduce sudden mortality rate in Nigeria and it is a private scheme in collaboration with the federal ministry of health.
The overall objective of World Mental Health Day is to raise awareness of mental health issues around the world and to mobilize efforts in support of mental health. The Day provides an opportunity for all stakeholders working on mental health issues to talk about their work and what more needs to be done to make mental health care a reality for people worldwide.
