GENERAL NEWS: Doctor, nurses 'toss' patient to his death; GMA blames poor infrastructure.

A family has been left distraught and in pain after attempts to get treatment for one of their members at two health facilities in Accra were ignored by nurses and a doctor leading to his death.

The 70-year-old man – whose name the family does not want mentioned – complained of having difficulties breathing and was rushed to the Emergency and Accident Unit of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital on Thursday.

Narrating the incident Friday on the Super Morning Show on Joy FM, a family member of the deceased who identified himself only as Selorm, said, his uncle died at the Korle Bu Polyclinic where they were directed to obtain a referral letter.

“When we got there, [Korle Bu Polyclinic] I rushed out of the car and went to the nurses' station and told her we have an emergency case and needed someone to take care of us and I was asked to bring him in,” Selorm told the Show host, Daniel Dadzie.

However, after about a minute when the nurses had still not come around to attend to the patient, Selorm said he approached the nurse and asked what else they needed to do to get his uncle attended to.

It was then that he was told to get a folder.



Selorm who took to Twitter on Thursday to express his frustration at the development said none of the health officials they met made any attempt to attend to them.

Selorm@S_2Ch

I’m really tired of this stupid country. It has caused me so much pain. It gets to a point you don’t even know what to do or say. I just lost my uncle because our health system as a whole is a failure

11:39 AM - Apr 4, 2018

• 716
• 1,241 people are talking about this

Twitter Ads info and privacy

The attendant who was to issue the folder was reportedly on the phone when Selorm got to her. She ignored him and although Selorm tried to get her attention, she was not perturbed.

It had to take Selorm’s father’s intervention for the attendant to drop the call, “before she gave me a code to go and pay for the folder,” Selorm narrated.

It was his hope that after getting the folder things would change, but they didn’t.

At this time, the patient's distress was getting worse and with every breath, “he moaned,” Selorm said.



His tweet caused quite an uproar on twitter with over a thousand tweets and about 100 comments

Fortunately, a doctor showed up after a while but only gave a lengthy explanation as to why he could not give the referral letter the family needed badly to get treatment for his uncle.

The family then decided to seek medical attention at another facility, but Selorm noticed a change in his uncle as they attempted to get him from the wheelchair he had been sitting in into the car.

“He had gotten limp all of a sudden,” Selorm said, adding that he rushed back into the hospital to attempt one last time to get someone to check his uncle.

But before they could get to the doctor who had earlier turned them away, his uncle gave up.

In a response to why the family had to drive all the way from Oyarifa to Korle Bu – some 33 kilometres – to get treatment, Selorm said his uncle had in weeks past been treated at the facility of a heart condition, so they thought it best to go back there since they already knew his history.

“No one asked us what was wrong with him. It was after he passed and they were filing the BID [Brought in Dead] form that the doctor asked if I knew the reason he was earlier admitted at Korle Bu.

”At no point did they attempt to help,” Selorm lamented.

Frustrated by the system

The Deputy General Secretary of the Ghana Medical Association (GMA) Dr Justice Yankson wasn’t exactly surprised at the development.

He, however, added that in any circumstance, once an emergency, patients should be able to get the needed treatment when they walk into any health facility.

“Generally speaking, any case which is a proper emergency should be able to get straight into the emergency room.”

The real problem, for Dr Yankson, is the appalling nature of the country’s health infrastructure.

He said “these episodes have played themselves over and over in our healthcare systems as a country. These are the fruits of what we have sowed as a country.”



Dr Yankson said one of the biggest challenges the healthcare delivery in Accra is facing is the poor attention given to emergency medical services.

He noted that the infrastructure challenges faced by the three traditional hospitals – Ridge, 37 and Korle Bu – is the reason incidents like that of Selorm keep occurring.

“They were all built in the colonial era and since independence, we have kept faith with them without any major and proper expansion or systematic plans to expand them to other regions and also having in place a world-class emergency medical service in the country.

“And these are the problems staring us in the face,” he added.

For him, the health personnel could do their best but if the basic infrastructure needed to do their job is inadequate, there is not much they can do.

“And when these things happen, it is made to look as if it is the health professionals who are the bad ones. They are rather working under very difficult circumstances,” he said