General News of Monday, 10 June 2019

Source: www.ghanaweb.com

How Ghanaian hospitals frustrated me after my accident - 'Broken' Philanthropist'

Priscilla Naa Aklerh Ocantey, Philantropist play videoPriscilla Naa Aklerh Ocantey, Philantropist

As though the trauma from a life-threatening accident wasn’t enough, she was subjected to the frustration of having to go through 5 painful surgical processes with the same results everytime.

Priscilla Naa Aklerh Ocantey broke her arm and leg while journeying to the Volta region to distribute books to Ghana Education Service centers as part of her duties as a distributor at Broadview Trust at the time.

A surgery was the only way out if she had any prospects of using her injured limbs any more thus, she resorted to some hospitals in Ghana to help solve her predicament.

Having been assured by doctors of those hospitals, she was hopeful that her arm would be fine, healing will take place and she’d be able to get her dreams back on track.

After the first four at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Koforidua failed, causing a false joint to grow around the implant, she took a chance on Korle Bu when she returned to Accra in 2015.

There also, she was assured that a surgery to correct the mishap would be possible but according to her, ‘four years down the line, it’s not worked because the same thing has happened again and this time, it’s even worse”.

She explained that every doctor she visited always complained about the ‘shoddy’ work done by the previous doctor.

“I went to Korle Bu first and they were just going back and forth, trying to ask me. They say it’s my biology that is not ok, my bones break the metal and break my bones again.”

“The funny thing is that, when the issue comes and you go to the hospital or to a different doctor, they will go like who worked on you, the person did a shoddy work, who work on you and that’s what they keep saying.”

The implants which were fixed she revealed, lasted barely five years instead of the ten or twenty-year period for corrective surgeries.



All efforts to correct the arm have proved futile leaving her with just one arm after 5 different surgeries.

Priscilla has resorted to seeking the help of members of the society to get treatment from a South African limb expert.

After this treatment, she says, her life-long dream of building a shelter for the poor and street children will be more in perspective and she can fully move about touching more lives and changing the world.