Édouard Fritch and several of his ministers went to the site of the Mental Health Center this Thursday morning, which was three years behind the initial schedule. It is expected to open to the public in the first half of 2023.
“A lot of satisfaction to finally see this project progress,” Edouard Fritch said this morning, who came with the Minister of the Economy Yvonnick Raffin, the Minister of Health Jacques Raynal and the Minister of Major Works René Temeharo. This mental health center, which we have been talking about since 2012, whose construction began in 2016 and which should have been delivered in 2019, will not be delivered until mid-October 2022. Recently, a problem of soil sealing had opposed the company Boyer in the Country, and interrupted the site for two years. However, the project remains in its initial budget, around 4 billion Fcfp.
Funding entirely provided by the Country, whereas initially the Mental Health Center was to be covered by the State-Country project contract, “But taking into account the time that it took to put in place this financing, we decided to launch the project and take it entirely at the expense of the Country,” reminds the president.
Residential and outpatient care for adults, adolescents and children
This hospital is inserted between the CHPF and Jean-Prince, to which it will be linked by bridges. It will complement the existing psychiatric structure with a new semi-open adult hospital unit with a capacity of 20 beds and a part-time therapeutic reception center with 10 places. It will also offer care for children and adolescents with a crisis center for adolescents, a medico-educational center, a therapeutic reception center and a day hospital for adolescents and for children, for a total of about sixty places. An early medico-social assistance center with a capacity of 25 places is also planned.
Finally, this new structure will make it possible to set up a toxicology and addictology care system with a medium-stay hospitalization unit with 12 beds and consultation and outpatient care for 20 places.
The opening of care is scheduled for the first half of 2023. Operation side, it is too early to announce figures. A mission of Credes, a reference in public health council, must come to carry out a study on the management of mental health in the whole of Polynesia, explains the Minister of Health Jacques Raynal.