Medics have called for heightened responsibility from members of the community in regard to identifying and quickly reporting cases of trauma, since mental health assistance for trauma cases will be accessed via phone calls during this year’s commemoration of the Genocide against the Tutsi. The same system was used in 2020 commemoration as well, as the country made efforts to prevent the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic. According to Claire Misago, the Director of Community Mental Health Rehabilitation Unit in the Mental Health Division at Rwanda Biomedical Centre (RBC), in case a person identifies any sign of trauma among any member of the community, a phone call should be made to report the situation to Community Health Workers (CHWs) who have been trained to provide emergency mental health assistance. Then the CHWs will give assistance either in terms of offering counseling to the affected person, or advising those attending to the patients on to how they should deal with the situation. All this will be done via the telephone. “There are up to 55,435 CHWs who were trained to provide primary mental health services. This means that every village has at least 2 of these CHWs. They have basic knowledge in providing care for mental health patients including those with trauma,” she said. “These CHWs were informed that for this edition of the commemoration, they will be assisting people by telephones, as a way to continue preventing the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic,” she said. However, she said, if symptoms persist after talking to the CHW, the patient can be taken to the closest district hospital where they can be assisted by more skilled medics like mental health nurses and clinical psychologists. “And if the situation does not change for the better at the district level, then the patient will be taken to a referral hospital,” Misago said. In all the 46 hospitals in the country (including district hospitals, provincial hospitals and referral hospitals), mental health services are available, since there are at least 2 or 3 medics that were trained in this field. Speaking about the assistance provided via telephone lines, Dr. Yvonne Kayiteshonga, the Manager of the Mental Health Division at RBC allayed fears concerning its effectiveness, saying that the patients with such conditions often need psychological support, not medicine. “Covid-19 has showed us that health services can be provided by phone. And when it comes to mental health, the basic treatment is always listening to the patients, understanding them, and trying to assist them. We don’t often give drugs, except in some particular conditions,” she said. She noted that when the system was first deployed last year, 60 percent of those who were reached out to recovered. She urged citizens to be their neighbour’s keepers, so that in case of identifying any sign of trauma, they will immediately call the CHWs or RBC’s toll free line of 114 to get assisted. Trauma cases are always most prevalent among Genocide survivors especially during the commemoration period.
