It's an unorthodox approach to holidaying, but when Paul Moore witnessed the human rights abuses of mental health patients in The Gambia, he decided to take the West African state to court. LAWRENCE MARZOUK reports.

A concrete jail in a tropical paradise overcrowded, humid, and crumbling. Outside, in the balmy streets of Banjul, the Gambian capital, the streets are teeming with life. But at any point you could be shackled and slung into this prison without a proper trial and detained indefinitely with no right to appeal. Your only crime would be mental illness.

This is the Royal Victoria Hospital in the west African state of The Gambia. The Sixties block is the mental asylum for the people of Banjul a city of more than 100,000 people.

But this abuse of human rights could become a thing of the past, and the unlikely instigator of this change is not an omnipotent international body, but a one-time holidaymaker to the country.

Paul Moore, 42, who works for the mental health charity Mind in Barnet, does not like to take things easy while on holiday, and has single-handedly managed to mount a damning case against The Gambia and its mental health care failings.

While sojourning in The Gambia, he decided to visit the Royal Victoria Hospital.

"I wasn't sure if it was possible, but when we explained the reason for our visit to the hospital security personnel, we were pleasantly surprised that we were allowed to enter," he said.

He was shocked by the shortage of medication, lack of clothing for patients, and the appalling state of the building. But is was not until he chanced upon the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights (ACHPR), where he discovered a bill of rights for all Africans, that the seeds of a daring plan were sewn.

On return to Britain, Mr Moore got hold of the Gambian mental health act the Lunatics Detention Act 1917. It contained a litany of outdated and iniquitous laws that spurred him to bring it to the attention of the Gambian government.

"Calling someone a lunatic due their mental distress is inhumane. There are no safeguards against abuse in the Lunatics Detention Act. A doctor who seeks to admit a patient need not be a consultant psychiatrist," he said.

"There is no provision to appeal against the decision to detain. Legal aid is not available and there are no inspecting bodies to ensure that conditions do not fall below a certain level.

"When we read the African Charter on Human Rights, an idea took shape to bring a case against the Gambian government through the African Commission, in the hope that the Lunatics Detention Act would be consigned to the waste basket of history."

His resolve was strengthened further when he realised that psychiatric patients were banned from voting.

Methodically, Mr Moore built up a case against the Gambian government, stating that overcrowding at the asylum amounted to inhuman and degrading treatment; the act discriminated against mental health patients by not allowing them to vote, and by not stating a fixed period of detention; and the lack of any appeal process violated the right for every individual to have his case heard.

The action was taken on by the African Commission, and finally heard in Niger in May 2003, where Mr Moore presented his findings. The commission found The Gambia in violation of the African Charter.

In December that year, Mr Moore met with the Gambian Minister for Health to discuss the ruling, and, although the commission does not have power to impose new legislation on a state, Mr Moore remains confident that The Gambia will fulfil the new requirements.

"I hope that our experience shows that it is possible to make changes for the better in this world," he said.