Cancer patient loses visa battle

A Ghanaian woman who came to study in Wales five years ago has been told she must return to the African country, despite being terminally ill.

Ama Sunami, 39, has been receiving dialysis at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff for over a year after cancer damaged her kidneys

Ms Sunami, whose visa has expired, said she cannot afford this care in Ghana.

She was taken from hospital on Wednesday. The Home Office said it was unable to comment on individual cases.

A friend said Ms Sunami, who was taken away from the hospital on Wednesday morning by immigration officials, to due to leave on a plane back to Ghana at 1400 GMT.

She left hospital in a wheelchair, was put into a van and taken away at around 0800 GMT.

The cancer she is suffering from - malignant myeloma - would ordinarily be treated with a bone marrow transplant.

But because Ms Sunami is a foreign national she is not entitled to this on the NHS.

The dialysis treatment she has been receiving is helping to prolong her life and her last treatment was on Tuesday evening.

Legal status

But it needs to be repeated regularly and there are concerns there are few dialysis treatment centres in Ghana.

Health care there is also private but Ms Sunami said she could not afford it.

"Where I am staying is in a village and there is no hospital, there is only a clinic," said Ms Sunami.

"That machine is only in Accra (Ghana's capital) and I do not know Accra at all."

A friend Janet Simmons said she did not know how Ms Sunami would cope back in Ghana.

"She comes from the northern part of Ghana which is the poorest part of the country," she said.

"Basically she has been sent there to die."

Ms Simmons added that her friend was a widow and a mother of two children, who were currently being looked after by members of her church in Ghana.

Ms Sunami is being removed from the country rather than deported because her visa expired some time ago which means she has no legal status in the UK.

A removal means that in theory she could apply to return to the UK in the future.

Several appeals have been made on her behalf to keep her in Wales, all of which are now exhausted, said her solicitor.

One which stated that she was too ill to travel home was rejected by the Border and Immigration service last May.

Ms Sunami said she came to Wales to study accountancy at a city college.