The State Of Ghana’s Only Contagious Diseases Prison (CDP) At Ankaful

Thirty-six (36) prisoners died at the Contagious Diseases Prison (CDP) alone, since 2009. Thus, an average of six deaths per year. In fact, one prisoner dies every two (2) months in this Prison. This death rate is disturbing but not surprising, because the establishment lacks basic facilities and personnel to provide the necessary health care services that will in the long run prevent avoidable and unnecessary deaths of the inmates.

Living in a closed community as this, and be witnessing this rate of death is certainly traumatic for the inmates and the staffs as well and puts them in a state of despair. But there is hope. The ‘Efiase’ Project is calling leading us to save the critically ill in prison especially those in the Contagious Diseases Prison.

The CDP is in dire need of specialist health personnel, well equipped clinic and ambulance, adequate and sufficient medication, improved nutrition, comprehensive medical insurance cover for inmates as well as staff and recreational facilities.

The CDP is one of the prison facilities designated to house prisoners who have contagious/communicable/infectious diseases such tuberculosis (TB) Hepatitis A and B and other skin infections to mention but a few.

This facility is located within the Ankaful Prison Complex in the Central Region. The CDP is built to hold this category of prisoners mainly to prevent the spread of infectious diseases amongst the general prison population. Thus, the separation is purposed to reduce the risk of infection among inmates and also to enable the sick prisoners have uninterrupted special attention and treatment (intensive care), in relation to their status as critically ill prisoners.

Classification and categorization of prisoners is a required operational management principle in prison management and a standard for of all prisons systems because it allows for purposively and effectively directing resources at specific target groups in the prisons in order to meet their peculiar needs. The United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners 22(2) states that, “Sick prisoners who require specialist treatment shall be transferred to specialised institutions or to civil hospitals. Where hospital facilities are provided in an institution, their equipment, furnishings and pharmaceutical supplies shall be proper for the medical care and treatment of sick prisoners, and there shall be a staff of suitable trained officers”.

In this case, the special facility is supposed to accommodate the critically ill prisoners in an environment that does not exacerbate the suffering inherent in their condition and that enables ongoing medical supervision.

Sadly Ghana Prisons cannot boast of any such facility. The only Contagious Diseases Prison (CDP) Ghana has is at Ankaful and it is also not in the condition that offers the required attention and care that very sick prisoners with communicable diseases require or deserve as human beings. The CDP is ill equipped to deal with the medical needs of the patients that are kept there. For instance, it has no clinic and is ill-equipped with basic medical equipment that will facilitate the provision of minimum health care for the inmates.

Secondly, none of the staff at the CDP is a professional medical practitioner and this makes it difficult to provide immediate health care during emergencies in the prison. This is in sharp contrast to what the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners 22.(1) mandates—“At every institution there shall be available the services of at least one qualified medical officer who should have some knowledge of psychiatry. The medical services should be organized in close relationship to the general health administration of the community or nation.

They shall include a psychiatric service for the diagnosis and, in proper cases, the treatment of states of mental abnormality”. Thus inmates are always transported to the nearest well resourced health facility—sometimes far away—for treatment when they are in crisis or need to go for medical review, as a result of the lack of health care facilities and personnel.

This is costly because the Service has to pay the external health provider for its services, pay for transportation and also send guards along with the inmate to the hospital for the duration of time they spend day—be it a day or month.

Because the prison facility has no vehicle or ambulance for this purpose, the staff of the prison sometimes depends on their personal vehicles or in dire cases commercial vehicles to transport these prisoners with highly contagious diseases to hospitals. The primary objective of having a contagious disease prison is thus defeated.

It is even heartbreaking to note, that the officers of CDP who handle these inmates are not provided with any protective gears/clothing, disinfectants or programmed to undergo any periodic immunization to prevent or reduce their risk of contracting these highly infectious diseases from the inmates. They have no insurance cover, neither are they made to undergo any periodic health checks/screening.

This is a threat to public health, because they live among other officers in the barracks and among the general public. They board public vehicles, interact with others at public places, eat at restaurants and even have wards/children in the public schools. In short, the officers are overly exposed and therefore at a high risk of being infected with the illnesses and also serving as conduits for their transfer to the general public.

The Ghana Prisons Service is also saddled with the challenge of funding hospital bills and expensive medication for the inmates because the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) does not cover most of the drugs that are prescribed. It is also reported that some of the hospitals have threaten to withdraw their services from the prisoners for lack of or undue delay in payment of medical bills. In effect, access to high cost of medical resources by inmates is simply uncertain at the CDP.

The primary consideration in all prison systems, especially the CDP should be to provide a healthy environment, to prevent further deterioration of disease, and to ensure that the sick receive the medical care equivalent to that in the community. However, the general infrastructure of the facility is appalling. The bedding system and sanitary conditions are bad. Adequate space and facilities for recreation and rehabilitation are absent making it difficult to facilitate the treatment regimes of the prison. Sadly, we cannot help but admit that the facility is an improvised one since it fails to offer the prisoners the minimum intensive health care that they deserve, as their human right.

Again, due to limited prison facilities, the CDP serves as the only prison in Ghana for inmates with transmissible diseases. This means most of them are often imprisoned far from home, which experts believe, limits the possibilities of visits from their families, sometimes causing severe problems for them and their families.

They insist that, ideally, this category of prisoners especially those who are critically ill should be kept in an institution as close as possible to their residence so as to encourage continued family visits and contacts who would also serve as a support group in the treatment process. It is therefore desirable that the Ghana Prisons Service is supported to improve upon the state of the current facility and also create more of it in other parts of the country.

Despite the current state of the Contagious Diseases Prison the Service is striving to best offer the prisoners their entitled standard of health care equivalent to that available in the outside community. In this spirit Project ‘Efiase’ is calling on all to assist it provide the needed care that our brothers and sisters deserve as human beings so as to restore their dignity.

Project ‘Efiase’ an initiative of the Prisons Service Council is aimed at ‘selling’ the conditions in the prisons to the public, soliciting and harnessing resources- in whatever form- to compliment government’s efforts in improving the welfare conditions of persons including the sick in prison custody. You are encouraged to support the Prisons Service to transform the Contagious Diseases Prison, CDP by donating to the Prison Reform Trust Fund.

IF GIVEN WITH LOVE, A HANDFUL IS ENOUGH! .....

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