By Nelson Ayivor
The Ho High Court, presided over by Justice Rosemarie Afua Asante, has slapped the Aflao Central Hospital with a cost of GH¢10,000 for failing to move a motion in respect of an application it filed seeking an interlocutory injunction to restrain the estate of late Belinda Adua from engaging the media.
The family of the deceased is seeking GH¢4 million in general damages, compensation for loss of life, upkeep for the surviving son and funeral expenses.
This comes after a preliminary investigative report by the Volta Region Health Directorate of the Ghana Health Service (GHS) identified “institutional lapses, including unclear directives, lack of guidelines, weak monitoring, and over-reliance on locum staff, especially doctors and nurses”, which resulted in Ms Adua’s death.
The report followed a petition to the President, the Minister of Health, the Ghana Health Service, and the Medical and Dental Council, by the family of the deceased for justice.
Case
The Central Aflao Hospital in the Ketu South Municipality of the Volta Region, and two of its nurses on April 11, 2023, were said to have refused Ms Adua treatment unless cash was deposited, leading to her death.
Her family said the pleas of the woman in agony, and her 19-year-old son, could not convince the nurses to accept mobile money payment for treatment, leaving her unattended until she died.
The Medical and Dental Council and the Ghana Health Service swiftly responded to the petition and dispatched a team of investigators to the hospital to look into the matter.
The police also invited the two nurses cited in the case for interrogation.
An elder sister of the deceased, Abigail Adua, earlier told the Media before the suit was filed, that at one point, when the patient appeared to have died, the hospital asked her son to take her to a government hospital, where she was pronounced dead on arrival.
Earlier this year, lawyers of the hospital filed a writ of summons against the family of the deceased, seeking to restrain them from media engagement, radio interviews and press interactions attacking the hospital as negligent, unsafe, and unfit for public patronage.
Lawyers for the hospital said the continuous attacks were causing irreparable reputational damage to the facility.
In an affidavit in opposition, counsel for the deceased’s family, Christian Lebrecht Malm-Hesse, argued that the hospital’s lawyers had failed to provide evidence of any statement authored by the family that was intended to damage the hospital’s reputation or indicate the media platform on which such statements were allegedly published.
When the case was called in court, the lead counsel for the hospital, T. K. Dzimega Jnr, was absent, and his brief holder, who said he (lead counsel) was indisposed, was not ready to move the motion.
Response
In response, counsel for the deceased argued that, given the Supreme Court’s recent practice direction, if a lawyer absented himself from court on medical grounds, he ought to furnish the court with a medical report.
In March this year, the court slapped the Central Aflao Hospital with a cost of GH¢5,000 for seeking to amend its defence statement late in the case.
The two parties are expected in court on June 1, 2026.
