The Police Hospital in Accra has said vehemently that it cannot be blamed in any way whatsoever for the death of Sima Ibrahim, the incarcerated boss of the Exopa Modelling Agency who died at the facility last Friday.
The hospital has said that claims of negligence being levelled against its staff are unfounded. It has, however, declined answering questions on whether or not it conducted an autopsy on the remains of Sima to ascertain the actual cause of his sudden death.
Reports say there was no permanent pathologist at the Police Hospital and therefore Sima’s family had to send his remains to the 37 Military Hospital where an autopsy was conducted.
When the question was put to ASP Juliana Obeng, Public Relations Officer of the hospital, she explained on NEAT Fm’s Entertainment Ghana show on Tuesday that the hospital has a pathologist but did not give an answer as to whether or not an autopsy was conducted on Sima.
“Honestly, when he [Sima] was brought in, from the time we carried him from the ambulance to wherever we were supposed to have administered help to him, he passed on…It means then that Sima did not even spend five minutes here at the Police Hospital before his death,” ASP Juliana Obeng explained on NEAT Fm.
The ASP had earlier told STARR Fm that Sima’s son, Abu, was making allegations of negligence against the hospital simply because the facility insisted on following due procedure.
“An act of negligence I do not know. I do not know if it’s because we have decided as a hospital to allow protocol procedures and processes, as it were, to be formally done or for us to respect these rules that’s why the son is coming up with the act of negligence,” ASP Obeng stated.
Though Sima’s family had announced his remains would be laid to rest by 10am on Tuesday at the Community 9 cemetery in Tema, the burial finally happened late afternoon after a series of back and forth and a lot of running around.
Authorities refused to release Sima’s body to his family Tuesday morning, insisting that the corona’s report had to be signed by a judge before the body could be released.
By the time the family finally got a judge to sign the report, it was noon; but again authorities said there had to be further documentation by Prison authorities because the deceased died a prisoner.
Eventually all the demands were met and the body was released around 3:30pm, after which Islamic prayers were said for him.
The remains were then transported to Tema for burial.
The international model was serving a 15-year jail term at the Nsawam Medium Security Prison over narcotics charges and had appealed the court verdict when he died.
Sima Ibrahim was 39 at the time of his arrest in 2009. His arrest and conviction made screaming headlines given his stature in the modelling industry, even as he contested the charges preferred against him.
