Today, 10 October 2008, we are commemorating World Mental Health Day. This annual commemoration which dates back to 1948 is a shining example of the partnership between the World Federation for Mental Health and the World Health Organization.
I am pleased to underline the importance of this year's commemoration as it is taking place together with other events such as the commemoration of the 60th Anniversary of the World Federation for Mental Health; the implementation of activities marking 30 years of the 1978 Alma-Ata Conference which led to the Alma-Ata Declaration on Primary Health Care; and the launch by the WHO Director-General, in Geneva, yesterday, of Mental Health Gap (mhGAP), a programme designed to address the failings of mental health services in resource-poor countries.
Notwithstanding the lack of data gathered on a wide scale, country and regional surveys and studies as well as projections based on global data indicate, nonetheless, that the situation in our Region deserves special attention and calls for effort at all levels.
The truth is that, the number of people suffering from mental health, neurological or substance abuse-related disorders in the WHO African Region, continues to increase. The increase is due to numerous factors especially the consequences of infectious, parasite or nutrition-related diseases and risk factors such as harmful use of alcohol, tobacco and illicit drugs, on the one hand, and lasting psychological traumas resulting from disasters, wars and extreme poverty, on the other.
Furthermore, the populations' limited access to health centres delays the diagnosis and care that they may need, thereby worsening the extent to which these problems affect their health in general and their mental health in particular. An estimated 10 million people suffer from epilepsy; more than 34 million people use cannabis; 25% to 30% of all hospitalizations in some countries that have statistics are caused, directly or indirectly, by alcohol use.
The theme for World Mental Health this year: Making mental health a global priority: Scaling up services through citizen advocacy and action, fits into the concerns of the World Health Organization in general and its Regional Office in particular.
Despite the adoption of resolutions, at the global and regional levels, inviting Member States to consider psychosocial and mental health issues as crucial to the balance and the health of individuals and groups, people suffering from mental, neurological and substance abuse-related disorders continue to be victims of stigmatization and rejection, while their basic rights are violated.
A significant number of families in the African Region consider mental problems as the preserve of African traditional medicine, inaccessible to medical or psychological treatment, and mostly incurable. In 1999 and 2001, Member States received inputs from new science-based understanding and recommendations deriving from the Regional Strategy for Mental Health 2000-2010 and the World Health Report 2001 entitled: Mental Health: New Understanding, New Hope.
Some of these recommendations are still relevant to Member States and communities in the Region. They concern: inclusion of mental health in national health plans; human resource development and retention; availability of essential psychotropic substances at all levels of the health care system; involvement of families, users of mental health services and traditional medicine stakeholders in mental health actions. WHO will continue to provide support for all these interventions.
We should all remember that health improvement requires the involvement of everyone: governors, communities, families, users of health services and researchers. I therefore call on the leaders of all Member States of the Region to deliver on the commitments made in Abuja by allocating to health the share of the budget needed to address health problems in general and mental health problems in particular, based on appropriate situation analyses.
I count on continuing and, if necessary, intensified cooperation with partners for contribution to research and training, and for availability of affordable psychotropic substances needed for long-course treatment.
WHO will continue to provide the technical support required to back-up efforts to improve the mental health of all categories of people especially the most vulnerable.
Last but not least, I would like to recap the message conveyed by the theme for Mental Health Day 2008, namely: everyone has a role to play; it is essential to keep up the effort to promote mental health and protect fundamental human rights; there is urgent need to identify the gaps and give the largest number of mental health patients access to quality care provided in appropriate, humanized services or in the community.
There is need for action today, here, now and everyday. As reflected in the vision of African traditional medicine and supported by other formal evidence: there is no health without mental health. We should endeavor to safeguard the advance we initially made in our understanding of comprehensive health which requires comprehensive care.
Thank you!