BasicNeeds-Ghana, a mental health and development advocacy organisation, has stepped up efforts at fostering more collaborations to deal with maternal mental health, HIV and TB responses for women and girls in the reproductive health age.
The Executive Director of BasicNeeds-Ghana, Dr Peter Bedimak Yaro, who made this known, said, “A key part of the project is for us to see that the maternal and child health care and welfare record books have an inclusion of items on assessing for mental health, among pregnant women and the newly delivered.”
Dr Yaro, who was speaking on the sidelines of a day’s stakeholder meeting in Accra, said mental health and psychosocial support services were inadequate in maternal and child health and welfare services, especially among women and girls who were living with HIV or at risk of HIV.
In that regard, he said, the project seeks to promote the integration of mental health and psychosocial support in maternal mental health care.
The Project
The project is being implemented by BasicNeeds-Ghana, in collaboration with the Christian Health Support Ghana, the Centre for People's Empowerment and Rights Initiatives and the Mental Health Society of Ghana. It is being funded by Expertise France Groupe, a French organisation.
Begining in May 2024, with preparatory activities of signing of agreements and having co-operation understanding with the Ghana Health Service (GHS), the Mental Health Authority (MHA), as well as having partnerships with some implementation partners, a baseline survey, to help the implementers to understand that mental health and psychosocial support services were highly inadequate in maternal and child health care facilities, had also been carried out.
They deliberated on the implementation of the project so far, and gained inputs on how best the project could address the issue of mental health among pregnant women and newly delivered mothers living with HIV or at risk of HIV.
Treatment
“Mental health and psychosocial support services are highly inadequate in TB and HIV treatment facilities and clinics, and so that is a key part that is missing in the whole therapy of providing treatment for people with mental health issues, HIV and TB, particularly women and girls in the reproductive health age,” Dr Yaro said.
“We have taken up working with the GHS to train community health workers, and to date, 1,390 community health nurses have been trained across the 14 project districts, with participants drawn from 28 health care facilities.
Dr Yaro said the next step after the stakeholder engagement was to gather inputs on ways to improve delivery of the care services, with particular emphasis on women and girls living with HIV, AIDS and TB in their reproductive health age.
He was happy about the support from the GHS so far, but said it could be improved.
“The GHS Research Ethics Committee reviewed the project and also gave approval that the project should be implemented, abiding by research principles, and so we have had a good level of cooperation,” he indicated.
