The Korle-Bu Hospital Suit

By William Yaw Owusu,

Saturday, 08 July 2006
THE mother of the 14-year-old boy who has sued the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital for negligence, yesterday told an Accra Fast Track High Court that her son had no problem with the left leg which was operated upon by the doctors.

“They made me sign an undertaking that the surgery was to be performed on the right leg,” Mrs Gladys Darko told the court.

The hospital in its statement of defence had said that although the boy (Frank Darko) was diagnosed with a torn patella ligament on the right knee, the doctors later realized that there was a problem on the left knee which also needed an immediate surgery.

Led in evidence by her counsel Thomas Hughes, Mrs Darko, who spoke in Twi said that the hospital made them buy an instrument called “support” for ў250,000 which was placed on the right knee of her son before the surgery was conducted.

She said after the surgery the boy was made to attend clinics and physiotherapy sessions on about 15 occasions but “we could not continue due to lack of funds.”

She said the hospital had asked her to bring her son for a final review this month. Mrs Darko said she paid for all the cost of treatment of her son, but she could not remember the total amount spent.

Cross examined by counsel for Korle-Bu, Shadrack Arhin, Mrs Darko told the court that she did not apply any traditional medicine to her son’s leg and said she did not go to the theatre where the surgery was performed.

She said that her son could not walk properly as a result of the “wrongful” surgery and was frustrated by the hospital authorities when the issue came up.

The suit, which was filed through the boy’s mother, cites the governing board of the hospital as well as doctors, Kennedy Addo, Korpisah, and Agbeko, all of Korle-Bu hospital for the alleged wrongful operation they conducted on him in September, last year.

In the suit the plaintiff said, the doctors had operated on the boy’s left knee instead of the right, after the diagnosis.

He further claimed that, her son’s father suffered a cardiac arrest and died as a result of the doctors’ negligence.

Darko is therefore claiming 800 million in damages.