Ministry of Health and Population Increases Number of Licensed Mental Health Facilities

Books – Walid Abdel Salam

Sunday, June 04, 2023 12:09 PM

Dr. Hossam Abdel Ghaffar, the official spokesman for the Ministry of Health and Population, confirmed that the number of specialist doctors and consultants who applied for registration, and were registered in the records of the National Council for Mental Health, increased to 764 doctors, and the number of inspection doctors in the regional councils for mental health increased to 92 doctors.

For her part, Dr. Manal Al-Attar, Head of the Central Administration of the Technical Secretariat of the National Council for Mental Health, said that the council organized 15 workshops and awareness seminars, in addition to 38 training courses, targeting 1,150 trainees of mental health doctors, in addition to holding periodic meetings with patient rights committees in the facilities. Governmental and private, to ensure that patients’ rights are fully implemented.

Al-Attar confirmed that the response rate to complaints received by the General Administration for the Care of the Rights of the Psychiatric Patient, as well as those received from the unified governmental complaints system, amounted to 100%, and the General Administration for the Care of the Rights of the Psychiatric Patient carried out 112 visits to psychiatric facilities.

She pointed out that the inspection campaigns organized by the National Council for Mental Health, in partnership with the General Administration for Drug Control, succeeded in closing 17 work centers without a license, noting that the number of beds under the supervision of the National Council for Mental Health amounted to 10,418 beds.