Govt urged to protect inmates

GOVERNMENT has been urged to take immediate action to ensure that the basic needs of Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison inmates — food, clothing and toiletries — must continue to be met, especially after the departure of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

MSF organisation’s head of mission, Mrs Abi Kebra Belaye, said this yesterday during the handover ceremony of MSF project activities to Zimbabwe Prisons and Correctional Prisons (ZPCS) at Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison in Harare.

MSF is considered to be an international, independent, medical humanitarian organisation.

Mrs Belaye said there was need for mental health inmates to have consistent access to appropriate treatment delivered by qualified inter-disciplinary health teams.

“While ZPCS staff have the willingness to take over full responsibility for caring for inmates with mental illness, the core issue remains that many of these inmates should not be in prison,” she said.

“Continued detention of inmates who are mentally ill strips them of their human dignity and it also negatively affects the health of their well-being of other inmates as well as prison staff.”

Mrs Belaye also said there was need to review the detention of patients with mental illness, particularly those that have committed minor offences.

“This group of patients should be referred to the appropriate health facilities. Over the past year-and-a-half, MSF has made significant investments both at the infrastructure readiness and staff training at the Harare Central Hospital Psychiatric unit to ready the unit to be able to receive some of these patients,” she said.

“MSF has also collaborated with the Ministry of Health and Child Care (MOHCC), City of Harare and University of Zimbabwe to expand psychiatric care to 12 polyclinics in Harare and one satellite clinic so that patients can receive care in their home communities without hospitalisation.”

Speaking at the same event, ZPCS Commissioner-General Paradzai Zimondi said they will continue with the project.

“As MSF leave this treasured project to us, we wish to assure them that we will continue to build on it and ensure that it continues to exist as an important part of our prison system. The project shall always remind us of the effect of our good partnership with MSF,” he said.