Pierre Sans, retired psychiatrist, publishes his third work entitled “Africa and mental illness, road books”.
For more than fifty years, Pierre Sans has been a psychiatrist entirely devoted to the cause of the mentally ill. On the eve of his 80th birthday, it has been ten years during which he devoted his retirement to humanitarian missions in several African countries. As his long career comes to an end and these missions will soon no longer be possible, he shares in his third book, his concern and his bitterness regarding the situation on this continent.
Between denial, rejection and non-existent medical structures, mental illness remains the poor relation of African health systems. “ How to ignore what looks like a real tragedy ? For the past ten years, I have denounced this omerta. In 2018, after several missions with the mentally ill in West Africa (Benin, Ivory Coast, and Madagascar), I wanted to alert opinions in a book Crazy about Africa the omerta, in the hope of drawing attention to the suffering of these patients “, entrusts Doctor Sans.
“ Today, four years later, after several missions, again in Côte d’Ivoire and Madagascar, then in Mayotte, I am relaunching exactly the same alert, revised and augmented, with my latest findings. In the twilight of my long career as a psychiatrist, I can’t bring myself to the deafening silence that stifles mental illness in Africa ! “.
Of these long months in total immersion as close as possible to the patients with whom he shared daily life. Of these journeys, from place to place, in vehicles often “rotten”, on rutted roads, Pierre Sans shares with us his enthusiasm, his disappointments, his indignation through his road diaries. We discover certain excesses, the carelessness of local powers, all in total indifference, the appalling omerta continues !