POLICE GRAB FAKE NURSE

...• After injecting ‘patients’ with unspecified drug

THE Kumasi Police have placed in custody a 41-year-old self-styled nurse for injecting at least 600 market women with an unspecified drug, ostensibly to protect them from Cerebro-Spinal Meningitis (CSM).

Agnes Opoku Agyemang charged her unsuspecting victims, mostly from the Kumasi Central Market, ?2,000 for each jab that they received. At the time of her arrest, Agnes had ?1.2 million on her.

The amount, it is believed, is part of the money she had collected from the women who normally formed long queues to have the drug administered on them.

The police also retrieved a quantity of syringes and needles that she used in injecting the women.

Also retrieved from Agnes were two bottles of drugs which she claimed to be anti-CSM. The drugs had no labels.

The suspect claimed she got a total of six bottles from an officer of the Medical Field Unit (MFU) in Kumasi at a cost of ?300,000. She, however, could not give the name of the officer nor his credentials.

Briefing the press on the incident, Superintendent Angwubutogbe Awuni of the Police Public Relations Unit said they had a hint that a woman, who claimed to be a nurse from the Ministry of Health, had been injecting some women at the central market for the past one week and collecting ?2,000 from them.

He said a team of policemen was dispatched to the market. There, they arrested the suspect, and retrieved a quantity of syringes, needles and two bottles of unidentified drugs from her.

She said the woman, who claimed to be a qualified nurse from Komfo Anokye Nursing Training School, said her certificate got lost in Nigeria where she worked with her husband.

Mr Thomas Ekow Sakyi, a polio vaccinator in the market, who witnessed the incident, said whilst at work at the market on Wednesday, some of the women questioned him about the CSM injection.

He said the women claimed that a nurse had been injecting them with anti-CSM drugs and collecting ?2,000 in the process.

He said during investigations, he found that one woman, who was injected by the said nurse, had had a swollen hand.

Mr Sakyi disclosed that he managed to trace the self-styled nurse and alerted the police who caused her arrest.

He said two of her alleged accomplices, a male and a female, however, managed to escape.