A legal practitioner and former General Secretary of the Ghana Medical Association (GMA), Dr Justice Yankson, has placed significant responsibility for the death of 29-year-old Charles Amissah on the ambulance service.
Speaking on Newsfile on May 9, following the release of the investigative committee’s findings and recommendations, he argued that the handling of the emergency response represented a critical lapse in duty of care.
Dr Yankson stressed that the Ghana National Ambulance Service is mandated not only to transport patients but also to provide essential pre-hospital medical intervention while en route to definitive care facilities. In his view, that obligation was not met in the case of Mr Amissah.
“Professor Akosa’s report is a very good one, but there is one area that I think, a lot of the blame, to be honest with you, should go to the ambulance service and their crew,” he argued.
“And Prof actually said it that, what should have happened and what could have saved him from the very word go was proper securing of homeostasis. Basically, to stop the bleeding, the bandaging and all those compression things that we do to stop the bleeding, and these are the things that the ambulance service and their staff should be able to do at the very spot, Prof. mentioned that, these didn’t happen,” he added.
“It talks about the fact that proper documentation in the ambulance didn’t happen, proper protocol was not followed, chain of command was missing.”
He noted that, according to the committee’s own findings, the deceased did not receive any form of medical treatment while in the ambulance. This, he said, was a fundamental breach that potentially altered the trajectory of the patient’s chances of survival.
Describing the situation as deeply concerning, he maintained that the ambulance service had the earliest and most critical opportunity to stabilise the patient but instead focused primarily on inter-hospital transfers.
He added that this omission must form a central part of accountability discussions.
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Source: www.myjoyonline.com