The Speaker of Parliament, Alban Sumana Kingsford Bagbin, has called for the enactment of an Emergency Care law to handle needless deaths of accident victims in health facilities across the country.
He said the passage of such a law would help hold negligent health workers accountable, ensuring that misconduct does not go unpunished and preventing needless deaths.
“There are many examples of these needless deaths in this country, and the same people, when you see them working outside, their attitude is different, which means that there is something wrong here,” he said.
Enquiries needed
Following a statement made by the Minority Leader, Alexander Afenyo-Markin, over the death of an engineer of Promasidor Ghana Limited in a hit-and-run incident on February 6, this year, Mr Bagbin also directed the Health Committee to take all the reports that would come from investigations conducted by the Ministry of Health and the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital and interrogate them.
He said that the circumstances surrounding Mr Ammisah’s death had sparked a national discussion that should not be confined to the Ministry of Health or the hospitals involved.
“We have to take control, and we need to enquire further into the matter, and we need to hold people accountable. This is one of the needless deaths we have experienced in this country.
“At the end of the day, the Minister of Health, together with the committee, will have to come before this House and then we can take that opportunity to legislate on the matter and try to bring finality to these needless deaths in our country,” he said.
Probe
Charles Ammisah, a 29-year-old worker of Promasidor Ghana, was involved in a hit-and-run accident at the Kwame Nkrumah Interchange.
The Speaker told the House that under Article 103 of the Constitution, Parliament had the primary duty to investigate matters of public importance and to expose inefficiencies and maladministration.
He, therefore, called for the Health Committee to be immediately empowered, and under the Speaker’s directive, to summon the Chief Executive Officers and Heads of the Emergency Units of the three hospitals involved.
He said the committee must also demand production of triage locks, duty rosters and bed occupancy records for that night Mr Ammisah died.
He said the committee must also establish conclusively whether the 2018 Ghana Health Service Directive was breached, and also determine whether professional misconduct or negligence occurred.
“If misconduct is found, sanctions must follow, and if negligence is proven, prosecution must follow.
“If a systematic failure is identified, comprehensive reform must follow,” he said, and added that, “If a young man can be carried from one public hospital to another, refused at every door until he dies, then the social contract is broken and none of us is safe”.
“Not the rich, not the poor, not the politician, not the ordinary man on the streets; the death of Charles Ammisah must force this nation to change, as human life cannot be subordinated to administrative convenience.
“Emergency cannot be optical, and our hospitals do not have the moral or legal discretion to abandon the dying,” he said.
Stop politicising issues
The Speaker said that while he acknowledged the conditions under which the health personnel operated, there were health personnel who handled accident cases and stabilised victims in the bush and not in hospitals.
“Patriotic health workers have done that, and people have survived through that.
“So please, the few that are miscreants should not be allowed to at least carry the day since that is what has been happening,” he said.
Urging the House to take a keen interest, he advised MPs to refrain from politicising sensitive national matters, warning that “sometimes you forget you could be the one”.
Systemic failure of the state
Explaining the rationale behind his call for a parliamentary probe, the Minority Leader said Ghana’s healthcare system, the sanctuary to which citizens fled in their most fragile hour, failed fatally to save Mr Ammisah.
He said the victim died in the back of an ambulance, virtually in the streets of Accra, because the institutions mandated to protect life turned him away.
He said at 10.32 p.m., the Ghana Ambulance Service (GSA) received a distress call, mobilised at 10:33 p.m. and was on site at 10:35 p.m.
He said the GAS, which performed its duty with professionalism and dispatch, found the victim bleeding profusely.
After recording the vital signs of a man with a fighting chance of survival, he said personnel stabilised him, controlled the haemorrhage and “rushed him to the gates of hope”.
“But hope, Mr Speaker, was met with a closed door,” he said, recounting how health personnel at the Police Hospital, the Ridge Hospital and the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital rejected attending to the victim on the excuse that there was no bed.
“At none of these facilities was triage conducted, and at none were vital signs even taken, and Charles Ammisah remained in that ambulance, his life ebbing away, while the institutions established by the Republic of Ghana to save him refused to receive him,” he said.
After approximately 30 minutes of that shameful odyssey, Mr Afenyo-Markin said, the victim went into cardiac arrest, despite the effort of the ambulance crew to save him.
“He was pronounced dead; a life extinguished not by the initial accident, but by a systemic failure of the state.
“Mr Speaker, this House must particularly be outraged because this was not merely an accident of circumstances, as it was a direct violation of state policy,” he said.
He recalled that in 2018, under the leadership of the then Director General of Ghana Health Service, a clear directive was issued explicitly prohibiting the denial of emergency care based on bed availability.
“The directive was unequivocal as it mandated immediate triage, immediate stabilisation and the use of alternative surfaces, couches, tables, wheelchairs, where beds were unavailable,” he said.
Contrary to the principle of stabilising victims, he said such a principle was “abandoned”, leading to the death of Mr Ammisah.
Given that Mr Ammisah was killed by a hit-and-run driver, he called on the Ghana Police Service to deploy every resource and investigative technique at their disposal to track down and apprehend the driver who killed the victim.
Accountability
Contributing to the statement, the Majority Leader, Mahama Ayariga, recounted how he had an accident but was saved by some health personnel at the Tamale Government Hospital.
He, however, lamented the high level of indiscipline, the disregard for human life and the lack of fellow feeling in most hospitals.
“We must be outraged about a thing like this, and I believe that we must get to the bottom of matters like this, and Parliament, at all times, must hold those responsible for such conduct to account,” he said.
Source:
www.graphic.com.gh
