Stop 'no-bed' deaths - Dead 70-year-old's family

The family of 70-year-old Anthony Opoku Acheampon, who lost his life at the LEKMA hospital after six other hospitals refused to admit him due to an apparent lack of beds, have said the government must sit up and ensure doctors and other healthcare practitioners, save rather than destroy lives.

Widow Esther Opoku Acheampon, told Accra100.5FM’s Ghana Yensom host Chief Jerry Forson on Tuesday, 12 June that: “The current situation in our hospitals is not the best for the country. I will plead with the government to sit up and ensure that the nurses and the doctors work up to expectations.”

According to the family, nurses and the doctor on duty at LEKMA at the time they got there, were sleeping around 2AM.

Ishmael Opoku, son of the deceased man, told Chief Jerry Forson that: “When we reported at the LEKMA hospital, the nurses on duty were sleeping, and, so, we had to knock hard at the door to awaken them before they could attend to us.”

Mr Opoku said: “After waking up, they told us the doctor on duty was sitting in his car parked outside, and, so, we rushed to the car only to find out that the doctor was also sleeping in his car and we had to wake him up to complain to him about the condition of my father.”

The incident, he said, happened on 3 June 2018 after he received a phone call from his mother to come home and assist in taking his father to the hospital because he was complaining of headache and dizziness.

At midnight, Mr Opoku and his mother drove the old man to the C&J Hospital at Adabraka where a nurse turned them away with the no-bed excuse without even administering first aid.

They left C&J Hospital to the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital where the same excuse was given. From Korle-Bu, they made trips to Korle-Bu Polyclinic, the Accra Regional Hospital, the Police Hospital and LEKMA Hospital where his father eventually died. All the hospitals they visited turned them away over claims that there was no bed.

At the LEKMA hospital, Mr Opoku said his mother knelt before the doctor and pleaded that her dying husband be attended to, but the doctor refused to take care of him, insisting there was nothing he could do.

Mr Acheampon died in his son’s car after all attempts to get him medical treatment failed.

An emotional Mr Opoku wondered why the medical officers did not even bother to examine his father to find out what was wrong with him.

He said he was highly disappointed in Ghana’s health system and was considering travelling abroad to join his siblings.