COI Report March 2012 - UK Border Agency - Home Office
COI Report March 2012 - UK Border Agency - Home Office
COI Report March 2012 - UK Border Agency - Home Office
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SRI LANKA 7 MARCH <strong>2012</strong><br />
suicide. Although this rate is considerably low when comparing with the 1995 data, it is<br />
still too high. Furthermore, the number of attempts is found to be ten to fifteen times<br />
more.‖ Out of a total number of 2,074 suicides between January and June 2009, 1,609<br />
were of males and 465 of females.<br />
23.24 The UN Concluding observations of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural<br />
Rights 463 , dated 9 December 2010 expressed concerned ―… that mental health services<br />
remain insufficient to cope with widespread post-conflict mental disorders. The<br />
Committee is also concerned that the 2007 draft Mental Health Act has still not been<br />
adopted.‖<br />
Mental health hospitals and clinics<br />
23.25 A letter from the British High Commission (BHC) Colombo 464 dated 31 January <strong>2012</strong><br />
reported:<br />
―The main public facility is the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH); a government<br />
run establishment which can hold up to 1500 residential patients at its two locations<br />
close to each other in Angoda and Mulleriyawa, Colombo. It boasts a psychiatric<br />
intensive care unit, a general medical ward, a geriatric psychiatry unit, a prenatal<br />
psychiatry unit and a learning unit. It has 1,000 full-time staff which includes 8<br />
consultant psychiatrists as well as 18 psychiatric social workers. Mulleriyawa is<br />
described as a halfway home which has 600 beds providing long term care for<br />
approximately 525 women. See: http://www.nimh.lk/<br />
―A Consultant Psychiatrist from NIMH told us that every district in Sri Lanka, apart from<br />
Monaragala, has a hospital offering treatment for mental illness. All of these hospitals<br />
have between 8 – 12 beds for patients. Colombo has two hospitals apart from NIMH<br />
offering this facility. He added that although the government‘s policy states that each<br />
district has at least 30 beds for patients with mental illnesses, this had not been<br />
implemented; adding that the only way many of the districts had managed to get extra<br />
beds was due to donations by the Sri Lanka College of Psychiatrists.<br />
―The Park Hospital, Park Road, Colombo 5. (www.parkhospitals.com) is the only private<br />
hospital providing psychiatric treatment with between 10 – 15 beds available for nonviolent<br />
patients. We were told however that all psychiatrists working in the public sector<br />
conduct private consultations after 4pm each day, which is known as ‗channel<br />
consultation‘.‖<br />
23.26 The same BHC letter 465 added:<br />
―Three organisations below provide the following services:<br />
� ―Sahanaya – The National Council for Mental Health – two centres in Borella and<br />
Gorakana providing walk-in clinics and day care centres –<br />
www.sahanaya.org/index .<br />
463 UN Concluding observations of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights , dated 9<br />
December 2010 http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cescr/docs/co/E.C.12.LKA.CO.2-4.doc date<br />
accessed 25 May 2011, p10<br />
464 British High Commission (BHC) Colombo, letter dated 31 January <strong>2012</strong><br />
465 British High Commission (BHC) Colombo, letter dated 31 January <strong>2012</strong><br />
180 The main text of this <strong>COI</strong> <strong>Report</strong> contains the most up to date publicly available information as at 3 February <strong>2012</strong>.<br />
Further brief information on recent events and reports has been provided in the Latest News section<br />
to 2 <strong>March</strong> <strong>2012</strong>.
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