Abia rehab home laments deplorable access road, seeks collaboration

<p>A community-based rehabilitation centre in Bende Local Council of Abia State, Methodist Church Nigeria Amaudo Integrated Community Mental Health Foundation, has lamented the deplorable state of its access road and infrastructure.</p>, <p>Management of the 34-year-old home said inadequate funding, logistics, and infrastructural deficits, especially the deplorable state of the only access road, about 40 kilometre Bende-Itumbauzo road, stretching to Bende Council headquarters, have become a clog in its wheel of success.</p>, <p>Consequently, the home, started in 1989 by Miss Roselyn Colwil, a Scottish (United Kingdom) Nurse, after she resigned as a Welfare Officer at Uzuakoli Leprosy Centre, sought media support and assistance to change the situation.</p>, <p>Officials of the home said the centre currently receives support from Amaudo United Kingdom and Abia State government, among others.</p>, <p>Director of the Foundation/ Home, Rev. Kenneth Nwaubani, said the centre currently has capacity for64 mentally challenged residents, while N200 million is required to run the centre yearly, although about N5 million is presently expended monthly.</p>, <p>He said: “Our environment is very serene and angelic. We are grateful to Amudo United Kingdom, our donor partners in the UK, Abia State government and other stakeholders. “We urge relations of the discharged mentally challenged persons not to reject or treat them as outcasts,”Nwaubani said.</p>, <p>Chairman of the Foundation Board, Emma Ndukwe, who said the centre hostsover 5,000 psychiatry student nurses yearly, saidthe mentally challenged residents are not violent, quarantined or restricted.</p>, <p>He disclosed that the affected persons are taught different kinds of skills, arts and crafts during their rehabilitation period.</p>, <p>Speaking at a seminar organised for media practitioners from Abia and neighbouring Imo States, in partnership with Abia State government, Federal Neuro- Psychiatric Hospital, Enugu and Amaudo UK, a senior lecturer and consultant psychiatr