The High Court in Accra on Wednesday, July 31, 2024, awarded GH¢3 million in damages to Mohammed Mustapha, the husband of a pregnant woman, Akua Nyarko Osei-Bonsu, who died after a caesarean section at the Greater Accra Regional Hospital (Ridge Hospital) in November 2019.

Mustapha sued the Ridge Hospital, the Ministry of Health, and the Attorney General in 2020, accusing the hospital of negligence which he said led to the untimely death of his wife after the caesarean section at the facility.

The widower, in an interview with Accra-based Happy FM on Friday, August 2, 2024, narrated the events that led to the sudden death of his wife at the Ridge Hospital.

He said that his pregnant wife, as she visited the hospital for antenatal care, was advised by the doctors to go for a caesarean to move her foetus into a biobag because its growth was retarding due to a condition called Intrauterine Growth Restriction (IUGR).

He said that he and his wife took the advice of the doctors and went in for the procedure, and he was in the hospital for about three days.

He said that after the procedure was completed on the third day, he went to see his wife who looked healthy and upbeat over the success of the operation because it was way smoother than she feared.

Knowing that his wife and the baby were okay, Mustapha said he went home to get some things so he would return to the hospital the following morning, but he woke up to a number of calls, urging him to rush to the hospital.

He said that he thought the doctors needed him to buy some medication for his wife, only for them to tell him that his wife, who was healthy and happy, had passed away.

“When I got there, they told me that they needed another relative of mine so they would speak to me; only for them to tell me that my wife has passed. I was like ‘What happened’? So, I quickly requested an autopsy because I was shocked. I saw her and she looked okay, so what happened?

“A lady she shared a room with also told me that there was blood oozing out of her nose and I asked why that happened because she had the operation on the lower part of her body. So, I wanted to know more,” he said in Twi.

Mustapha said that after the autopsy was done, it revealed that the cause of his wife’s death was post-operative and it had nothing to do with an underlying condition.

He then wrote to the hospital to explain what happened, and after months of back and forth, the hospital released a report which showed that Nyarko Osei-Bonsu died as a result of blood clotting in her lungs and that was the reason why blood was oozing out of her nose.

He said that the report also indicated that his wife was supposed to be given a medicine called Fragmin, 12 hours after the operation to prevent the blood clot, but he refused to buy it after several requests from the nurses at Ridge.

He said that he was shocked by the statement of the nurses in the report because, to the best of his knowledge, he had gotten all the needed medications and medical supplies for his wife’s operation.

“When I came home, I came to check the receipt of drugs I bought because I quite remember that when we were going in for the operation, the prescription form they gave us included a CS pack, which constitutes all the drugs that you would need for the CS and post-operation, and I made payment for it.

“I was with the mind that the drug should be a component of that CS pack, and so I went through the things on the CS pack and fortunately for me, that drug was captured in the receipt of drugs that I paid for. And interestingly, it is not as if when I paid, they gave me the drugs, they dispensed the drugs to the patient. So, how come they said the medicine was not available,” he narrated further.

The widower added that he challenged the hospital authorities to provide the prescription they gave him to go and purchase the Fragmin, but they could not because it was a lie.

He said that the report also revealed that when his wife’s condition was getting out of hand, they gave her a variation of the Fragmin 16 hours after the CS, but it was too late to save her life.

Watch the interview below:



BAI/NOQ

Watch the latest episode of Everyday People on GhanaWeb TV below:





Ghana’s leading digital news platform, GhanaWeb, in conjunction with the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, is embarking on an aggressive campaign which is geared towards ensuring that parliament passes comprehensive legislation to guide organ harvesting, organ donation, and organ transplantation in the country.