I will no more speak to the media on national issues – Prof. Akosa

Outspoken Pathologists and politician, Professor Agyeman Badu Akosa, has taken a decision not to speak on national issues in the media again, following the vilification he suffered on Adom TV’s Pampaso, on Thursday.

Prof. Akosa demanded that Ghanaians needed to be told circumstance that led to the death of the late President John Evans Ata Mills.

According to the former Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, like many others have, that whereas the cause of the late president’s death has been established by the coroner’s autopsy to be natural, there were still many questions to be answered about the circumstances that led to his death.

Some callers into the show agreed with him, but others insisted that he was doing politics with the late president’s death and that it was the will of God for the late president to have died so “we should leave it at that.”

Prof. Akosa expressed utter surprise at Ghanaians, saying: “I am sad that we have just reduced every death in this country to the will of God – if that were the case then there is no need for medical practice because, if it is the will of God for someone to die, no amount of medical attention can save the person.

“We should then all forget about seeing the doctor when we are sick and wait for the will of God to happen because if it is God’s will for us to survive a medical condition or die from it, there is nothing a doctor can do about it,” he added.

After the show, while chatting with the host, Kofi Adoma and the producers of the show, he stated “please do not invite me to or call me on any TV or Radio show to speak on national issues again because today, I have realized that it is not worth sharing my knowledge and experience with people who would rather attribute every death to the will of God instead of demanding answers that can lead to better service next time.”

Prior to stating that decision, Prof. Akosa had said that he was aware the Coroner’s Autopsy on late President Mills’ body stated the cause of his death as natural, adding that to the extent that no one had challenged the report, “we should leave it at that”.

He, however, insisted that there were genuine questions to be answered about the circumstances that led to the late president’s death, saying questions about the medical presence at the presidency, whether an ambulance was called, who called the ambulance, at what time did the ambulance arrived, if any; was the ambulance well equipped, what exactly went on in the ambulance, could the hospital communicate with the ambulance, how prepared was the hospital when the president was taken there and other such questions.

The outspoken Professor said those questions are necessary to guide the country to make better preparations against such unforeseen incidents.

“There is 24/7 medical presence at the White House in America and Number 10 Downing Street in the UK, but I cannot not tell whether we have the same situation in our presidency – these are questions we must ask so we can be guided to do better,” he said.

Prof. Akosa, who was once the Director-General of Ghana Health Service said during his tenure, the country had no ambulances but “vans marked with a red cross with a stretcher at the back and driven by an ordinary utility driver.”

“Those were no ambulances because an ambulance should have a driver and assistant who have expertise in monitoring cardiac function and providing basic life support until the ambulance reaches the hospital – a proper ambulance should also have oxygen, and other life support systems,” he said.

He said elsewhere, if an ambulance took more than 20minutes to arrive at an incident spot it was a big issue, adding that if a patient arrived at a hospital alive and breathing and died at the hospital, somebody must provide answers about the circumstances that led to the death, and that is different from the autopsy report.