The management of the Federal Neuropsychiatric Hospital, Enugu, has passionately appealed to Federal Government through the Federal Ministry of Health to employ and deploy more clinic staff to the hospital.

The Medical Director of the hospital, Dr Monday Igwe, made the appeal while speaking to journalists in Enugu on Sunday.

Igwe noted that there had been massive exodus of the core clinical staff of the hospital, adding that the hospital currently had serious core clinic staff shortage even as the number of patients of the hospital keeps increasing daily.

“We have a challenge of the exit of core clinical staff and it has been difficult getting approval to replace the core clinical staff.

“Many of our staff have been going abroad, doctors, nurses; some resigning, some retiring and even death. We need to replace them since we are having an ever increasing number of patients coming to the hospital daily,” he said.

According to him, this era of difficulties (socioeconomic), depression, suicide attempts and drug abuse have made the hospital to have increased number of patients.

“So, we clearly have an up-surge in number of patients and very few professionals taking care of them. We direly needed more professional (clinical staff) hands,” he said.

The Federal Neuropsychiatric Hospital, Enugu is the only health institution/facility meant to take care of mentally ill patients in the Southeast.