Govt. orders closure of Erwadi asylums

By Our Special Correspondent

CHENNAI, AUG. 10. The Tamil Nadu Government today ordered the closure of all 16 mental asylums in and around Erwadi in Ramanathapuram district and also other homes for the mentally ill functioning in thatched sheds in the rest of the State.

The 416 inmates of the Erwadi mental asylums would be ``taken into the care'' of the Government and those ``actually mentally ill'' would be moved to State-run hospitals. The inmates who are not mentally ill would be sent back to their families.

In the wake of Monday's fire in a mental asylum at Erwadi, killing 28 patients, the Chief Minister, Ms. Jayalalithaa, conferred with senior officials at the Secretariat here this morning and came up with a rash of measures to clamp down on these homes.

Announcing the decisions, the Chief Minister said a Commission of Inquiry headed by a district judge would be instituted to probe the fire.

District mental health programmes would be implemented immediately in Ramanathapuram and neighbouring Madurai with an allocation of Rs.1 crore each. Psychiatrists would be posted in the remaining 14 out of the 25 district headquarters hospitals which did not have such specialists.

The Collectors would make an immediate inspection of all homes for the mentally ill in their districts. All existing asylums across the State should obtain a licence within a month, and new homes for the mentally ill could not be opened without licence.

The patients tied to chains in various homes would immediately be ``unchained''. Patients with violent tendencies would be admitted to government mental institutes for further treatment.

(Homes offering faith cure function at Gunaseelam in Tiruchi, Courtallam in Tirunelveli, Goripalayam in Madurai and Tiruvidaimaruthur in Thanjavur and Kancheepuram, besides the ones at Erwadi).

The Government would establish monitoring committees in every district headed by the Collector and comprising the Joint Director (Health), a trained psychiatrist and other medical personnel. The committees would conduct periodical inspection of the asylums to ensure that they conformed to prescribed guidelines.

As for the inmates of the asylums who were found to be normal but were abandoned by their families, old-age pension under the category of destitutes would be sanctioned by the Collectors. And, those who had no homes to return to would be admitted to old-age or destitute homes run by the Government and reputed NGOs.

Later, the Health Minister, Mr. S. Semmalai, said the inmates of the asylums requiring treatment would be shifted to the Institute of Mental Health (IMH), Chennai, and other district headquarters hospitals.

Insisting that there were adequate facilities for accommodating the inmates of Erwadi homes, he said the IMH with a 1,800-bed facility had only 1,500 patients now and could take 300 more. Besides the IMH, the psychiatry wards of other government hospitals had a bed strength of 185. The Government had already released Rs. 57 lakhs towards the Rs.2-crore district mental health programmes in Madurai and Ramanathapuram.

The Health Minister said he had already written to the Centre seeking assistance for a Rs.1-crore programme for creating a 100 bed-facility for the mentally ill patients at the Tiruchi district headquarters hospital.

Besides, the State Government would push for the Centre's clearance of another Rs. 305-crore project with Japanese funding to improve mental health services.

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Section  : Southern States
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