Katanga Alumni is made up of students who were residents of the University Hall known as Katanga during their tertiary education at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology.
The members of this association recently donated to the Accra Psychiatric Hospital. They presented food items which included four sacks of rice, a sack of maize, bags of water, 10 crates of eggs, 100 tubers of yam, and two gallons each of palm oil and vegetable oil. They also presented a box of tomatoes, a sack each of ginger, soya beans, and beans, four American tins of agushie, two mini sacks of onions, a sack of maize, a bucket of margarine, and a sack each of salt and pepper.
While making this presentation, the President of the Global Katanga Alumni Association, Nana Otu Turkson noted that the donation was their way of supporting those considered vulnerable in society. He explained that this gesture was also in line with the association’s tradition of assisting the psychiatric hospital on an annual basis. He also acknowledged the effort of all the members of the group who assisted in their ways to make the donation possible.
He said, “This engagement started around 2007 by those before us and we have at least been consistent and made sure that every year, we come to support. Mental illness is actually a matter of a sliding scale. We all experience it at some point or the other and therefore we take this as a very serious social responsibility to give back to our brothers and sisters who find themselves in such unfortunate situations because we never know when we might need the services.”
A Nurse and Public Relations officer of the Accra Psychiatric Hospital, Francisca Ntow, received the items on behalf of the hospital and expressed her gratitude for their gesture. In the same breath, she advised men to seek mental health assistance when faced with an emotional problem. She explained that most men often struggle to open up about their emotions because of societal expectations of them, and this can subsequently lead to depression.
She said, “Men would actually shield everything to get to the point where they can’t take it anymore and then they are admitted. So currently, we see a lot of men on admission than we see women at the hospital,” she said.
Consequently, she urged the public to pay attention to their health, saying, “Include mental health checks in your regular general medical check-ups so issues are picked up early. Walk to any facility or psychiatric hospital to see and tell the doctor or the nurses that you think you need to be assessed mentally. It’s not wrong.”
After presenting their donation, the management of the hospital led the members who were present on a tour of the wards.