Child dies after Battor Hospital refuses him admission

A 13-year-old male pupil of Mepe Presbyterian Primary School in the North Tongu District of the Volta Region, Egbitu Joe who was bitten by a snake died painfully after Battor Roman Catholic Hospital refused to admit him due to lack of antiviral drug to inject the boy.

The death of the boy has heightened tension and confusion between the youth of Mepe and Battor Roman Catholic Hospital for which many people including the students of the area chastised the management of the hospital for wrong doing.

According to the sister of the deceased, Madam Salormey Egbitu, irrespective of the fact that they were willing to pay for the boy’s medical treatment, the hospital refused to attend to him or even provide the boy with first aid.

The incident, Madam Egbitu said happened on the dawn of Wednesday June 5, 2019, when the boy was taken to the Battor Roman Catholic Hospital but the doctors and nurses on duty rejected him with an excuse that there was no antiviral drug to inject the boy who was bitten by the snake.

She lamented that "So we rushed the boy to the house for the traditional festist prients (doctors) to try their hands, but sadly he could not survive the traditional treatment when he eventually died around 1:30 pm.”

At the hospital, Madam Egbitu recalled that they knelt before the nurses and doctors and pleaded that the boy be attended to but the nurses and doctors refused to take care of the boy insisting there was nothing they could do.

She pointed out that the victim died in pains after all attempts to get him medical treatment failed.

An emotional Madam Egbitu wondered why the medical officers did not even bother to examine the boy to find out what was wrong with him.

She said he was highly disappointed in Ghana’s health system.

Madam Egbitu said the family is not pushing for litigation but prays no other family goes through what he had gone through.