Mental Health: FG Trains Community Health Workers in Kaduna State
By Alex Uangbaoje, Kaduna
The Federal Neuro Psychiatry Hospital on Friday began the training for 25 community health workers of Kaduna State General Hospitals.
The Medical Director of the institution, Dr Taiwo Lateef, said the programme was a year-long with aspect of supporting, monitoring and evaluation to ensure the participants comply with the knowledge acquired during the workshop.
Lateef said the workshop would also identify the challenges in mental health care delivery for healthy status of rural communities.
“We are training them on how to handle mental illness in their various localities.
“At the end of the program, evaluation would be conducted to ascertain the impact of the workshop to communities,’’ he said.
He added that the workshop was in collaboration with the committee on tertiary health institutions of Federal House of Representatives and Kaduna State Government.
Speaking at the occasion, Hon. Hassan Shekarau, Member of the Committee on Health, Federal House of Representatives, said mental health issues should be treated specially as it affects the society daily.
“We at the House of Representatives saw the important of mental health and decided to treat the decision of this program with importance because we saw the need of it to our rural communities
.
“We saw wisdom in it and decided to provide funds for it so that mental health issues can be reduced,’’ he said.
Also speaking, the State Commissioner for Health, Dr Paul Dogo, appreciated the organisers for the capacity building.
Dogo said engaging in such programme would better the life of people in the state.
Represented by the Director, Substance Abuse, Dr Baka Shedouw-Isiah, said the programme would help in solving mental health issues in the state because it is informative and timely.
“People who have mental health now will be treated at their door steps because this program is a step to treatment at home.
“This program should be encouraged both at the federal, state and local levels,’’ the commissioner said.
