UGMC could’ve saved 70-yr-old man – Lawyer

If the University of Ghana Medical Centre (UGMC) had been opened for use, it could have saved 70-year-old Anthony Opoku-Acheampong, who lost his life at the LEKMA hospital after six other hospitals refused to admit him due to an apparent lack of beds, a private legal practitioner, Bobby Banson, has said.

According to him, the country needs the political will to ensure that unused health facilities including the UGMC are operational.

“If the Legon hospital had been opened, maybe the man would have been taken there and be saved,” he said on TV3’s New Day programme on Saturday, 16 June.

He added: “We need the political will to bring this to fruition.”

Ishmael Opoku, son of the deceased man explained that the incident 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 Opoku-Acheampong died in his son’s car after all attempts to get him medical treatment failed.