Ridge Hospital death recommendations

The Committee tasked to investigate the circumstances surrounding the death of Mrs. Gladys Ampadu at the Ridge Hospital has stated that no surgery was performed on the woman and that she did not die on the operating table.

It has also established that there was no power outage while Mrs. Ampadu was at the hospital in 7 June and 8 June 2002. This was contained in a statement issued in Accra on Thursday by the Minister of Information and Presidential Affairs, hon. Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey.

The statement stated the report and recommendations of the five-member Committee that investigated the circumstances surrounding the death of Mrs. Ampadu and the loss of documents concerning the theatre at the hospital.

The Committee, headed by Nii Osa Mills, Vice President of the Ghana Bar Association was given two weeks to complete its work and it submitted the report to the Minister of Health on 20 December 2002.

It said according to provisional diagnosis of the doctors, who saw and treated Mrs. Ampadu, she died of gastroenteritis. The report said though she died within 24 hours of admission in the hospital, no post mortem was conducted.

The statement said the medical cause of death certificate dated 10 June 2002 was signed by Dr. Sakyi Obuobi, who did not see the patient and that there was no evidence that Mrs Ampadu had peritonitis as stated on the certificate.

The report, according to the statement, said the issue of lack of a generator did not arise as far as the case of Mrs. Ampadu was concerned though there was no functional generator at the hospital.

The report also stated that the doctors' notes on the patient were scanty and indicated that the Committee was unable to establish conclusively who might have removed the missing pages from the surgical cases record book.

This is because the books were not appropriately secured and any of the doctors in the surgical teams and theatre staff could have removed it as they all had access to those records.

The report said the committee was doubtful that an outsider could have removed the page from the book but did not rule out that a non-theatre staff of the hospital could do so.

The report said the committee found that the page covering Mrs. Ampadu had been removed from the emergency ward nurses report book for June, 2002 and that it (Committee) was unable to pinpoint the culprit, as all nursing staff and doctors had access to it.

The Committee therefore recommended that the body of the late Mrs. Ampadu be exhumed for post-mortem to determine the cause of death. The recommendations also stated that quality care assurance practices should be improved at the hospital.

The report said the matter of missing pages from the two surgical record books and the emergency recovery ward record book should be referred to the police for investigations.

The committee also recommended that a specialist on duty should be required to routinely review patients detained at the emergency recovery ward as soon as he or she started work in the morning.

It said a doctor on duty at the emergency recovery ward must be required to hand over personally to the next doctor before going off duty. The Committee has also recommended that the Ghana health Service should have a policy to ensure that generators at the hospital were installed in such a way as to serve only the theatre and essential equipment to prevent overloading that could result to a decrease in the life span of the plants.

It also recommended that the process for acquisition of a generator for the Ridge, regional and district hospitals be expedited. The report recommended the provision of appropriate voltage stabilizers to protect electrical equipment, mobile theatre lamps, resuscitation trays with all resuscitating equipment and the provision of security lights in the compound of the Ridge Hospital.

An allegation was made by Mr kwesi Pratt Jnr. in the 30 October 2002 edition of the "Insight", a private newspaper, that the death of the late Mrs Ampadu at the Ridge Hospital on 8 June 2002 occurred on the operating table as a result of power failure. This necessitated the Ministry of health to institute a public enquiry into the incident.