There is no health without mental health. In Burundi, the government has yet to develop a specific national strategy surrounding mental health. This means that interventions aimed at improving the quality of life and care of mental health patients are difficult to put in place considering the lack of budget allocated to mental health treatment in addition to the overall scarcity of knowledge regarding the topic. Burundian medical personnel are indeed not qualified to deal with mental health patients and the population is poorly sensitised to such issues.

HealthNet TPO has been organising mental health trainings for the past 3 months in the Burundian provinces of Cibitoke, Kayanza and Ngozi. Over 3000 local health workers, including health advocates, nurses and doctors, attended the training to learn how to provide community-based psychosocial support. Participants were trained to become the initial point of contact for people suffering from various forms of trauma or distress. The main goal of the programme is to enable better recognition of the symptoms related to mental illness or distress in order to redirect community members to health centres at an earlier stage.

Before the training, most participants recognised their lack of knowledge regarding mental health issues and later deemed the programme successful in its mission. Following the training, several recommendations were issued to the government which stress the urgency of addressing the topic of mental health in Burundi.

HealthNet TPO works in Burundi as a consortium of NGOs under the programme ‘Twiteho Amagara.’ Funded by the EU, the programme strengthens the resilience of the Burundian population and supports the healthcare system.

The community-based approach to handling mental health has been applied to other health domains as interventions via our partner organisations have delivered promising results. WeWorld trained community health workers in the province of Kayanza on the new protocol regarding the diagnosis and treatment of malaria. In line with this community-based mobilisation, Pathfinder organised theatre performances in various provinces to spread awareness about the maternal and neonatal health services that are available at a community level.

ABS organised a conference on the topic of Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights (SRHR) for community leaders and health workers. The event is a response to the abundance of early pregnancies and HIV infections that partly come from a widespread taboo around sex in Burundi. In a similar effort to break this taboo, Medica Mondiale created an educational programme to be integrated in the school curriculums with the goal of preventing sexual violence among youth in 3 provinces. Through role-playing, discussions and problem-solving, the programme touches upon topics of control, violence, and harassment at school and work.