Ghana Somubi Dwumadie’s COVID-19 Grants support people with disabilities and mental health conditions

Asekabta Gilbert, a teacher with a disability in Sandema who featured in one of our COVID-19 short films teaching whilst a videographer films.

When COVID-19 turned our country upside down, Ghanaians were unprepared, especially for the economic, emotional, and psychological toll the pandemic was to visit on them.

For many, it was the fear and panic around contracting the virus. For others, it was the inability to make ends meet due to the initial restrictions, and yet for others, it was the gap in knowledge and information to keep safe while moving on with their lives. The latter was the case for many people with disabilities, including people with mental health conditions.

“The disease brought fear because we didn’t know the way it spreads. Most of us, we feared coming out because you don’t where you will go to pick it,” said Sylvester Niyemse, the President of Ghana Blind Union in the Upper East region.

This was because although government-sponsored public education was ongoing at the time, it wasn’t tailored to the needs of people with disabilities and people with mental health conditions.

Hawa Issifu, a woman with disability in Garu (upper east region) who participated in training on COVID-19 is being helped to get ready for an interview.

Ghana Somubi Dwumadie put out a call for proposals for its COVID-19 Resilience Grants in 2020, with the goal of reducing the negative effects of COVID-19 on people with disabilities, including people with mental health conditions, people infected with or recovering from COVID-19, as well as healthcare workers, by increasing their access to safe and reliable wellbeing and psychosocial support.

Members of GSPD in Koforidua meet to discuss their affairs.

After a year of hard work with diverse communities around the country, the COVID-19 grant came to a successful end in October 2021 with numerous stories of change and impact.

The Christian Health Association of Ghana (CHAG) for instance was enormously helpful when tragedy struck at Apam in 2021. Some 13 teenagers drowned when they went out to swim with friends. CHAG’s project under the COVID grant had begun training healthcare workers to offer psychosocial support to those who need it, and that training was leveraged as they moved into the community to provide help for families that lost their children, and fisher folk who helped to retrieve the bodies.

“We offered them general psychosocial support and counselling [and started] identifying the possible mental health problems that they were likely to experience” noted John Evans Fiifi Ansah, a senior mental health nurse at the St. Luke Catholic Hospital in Apam.

A film crew interview Abdul Fatau from MEHSOG. In the background are members of the Amasaman self-help group in a meeting.

On their part, the Mental Health Society of Ghana (MEHSOG) provided training to members of self-help groups on the use of personal protective gear like facemasks, and hand washing techniques, and also equipped them with knowledge about the virus and how to stay safe.

One self-help group member, Esther Kwarteng said: “The effects of the pandemic on our lives were terrible. We were afraid to go for our reviews at the hospitals until MEHSOG came in to train us on how to keep safe.”

The Presbyterian Community-Based Rehabilitation (PCBR)-Garu and Sandema trained their members and empowered them to educate other people in the community, reaching out to them through radio programmes. Hawa Issifu, a trader with disability in Garu stated that due to fears surrounding the virus at the time, people were even afraid to assist wheelchair users and other people with disabilities who required aid to move around.

“Due to COVID-19”, she said, “any attempt to get some form of assistance from people proved futile due to doubts over whether or not you had the virus.”

The Human Rights Advocacy Centre (HRAC) also trained community champions who went out to train and educate others in their communities.

The mother of a deceased boy in the Apam disaster celebrates the birth of another son with her family.

As a result of these grantees’ efforts, today, many people with disabilities and mental conditions are recognised as partners in decision-making for health delivery by the Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies.

Their level of confidence is built to demand their rights, and they have worked hard to educate their communities to stop stigmatising them. They have also engaged traditional and religious leaders to include them in developmental and social programmes on health.

All these success stories of the COVID-19 Resilience Grants have been summarised in six short films, highlighting the impact of our grantees’ work. These will be screened soon!