Korle-Bu Releases Detained Chinese

The Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital has finally released Qiao Yongshong,the 49-year-old Chinese citizen who had been detained at the hospital for over a month, due to his inability to settle his medical bills.

The Public Relations Officer of the hospital, Mr Mustapha Salifu, briefing The Mirror, said that his discharge was made possible after the payment of the full debt of ?1.7 million by his relatives following The Mirror front page publication on his plight two weeks ago.

Mr Yongshong was admitted to the hospital on October 5, this year, in a critical condition when he was suffering from cerebral malaria and dehydration as a result of excessive vomiting. After treatment he was expected to have been discharged on October 22.

However, Mr Salifu said the contact numbers that the relations of Mr Yongshong provided when they brought him to the hospital were all inactive. He explained that several attempts had been made to contact the family members and the Chinese embassy but all proved futile.

He said the man could not be allowed to go without the full settlement of his bills,adding that if he were a Ghanaian, his case would have been referred to the Social Welfare Department of the hospital.In connection with another Mirror front page story on the 14-year-old Christian Salvo, whose leg was rotting away and who was taken to the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, information from the hospital confirms that the doctors are working frantically to save his leg.

It would be recalled that Christian Salvo was living with his grandmother at Abakrampa in the Central Region and his leg was left to rot as a result of his family?s rejection of an earlier decision to amputate it. Following The Mirror publication of the predicament of the young boy about two months ago, the President, Mr John Agyekum Kufuor,in a swift humanitarian response, ordered that the boy be brought to Accra to receive immediate and proper medical attention at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital.

The doctors giving him attention could not be reached but the PRO, Mustapha Salifu, said so far the doctors had been able to drain fluid that had been collecting in the leg and that efforts were being made to join the bones in the shin of his leg.

When this reporter visited Christian at his hospital bedside on Wednesday he was engrossed in reading a pile of story-books that had been provided him by the President.Christian who looked cheerful, expressed his gratitude to the President and hospital staff and wished them a merry Christmas in advance.