By William Yaw Owusu
Tuesday, 07 November 2006
The boy who sued the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital for negligence, told the Fast Track High Court hearing the case yesterday that there was nothing wrong with his left leg when it was operated upon by the hospital.
"I now have pains in my left leg which was wrongly operated upon and cannot play football anymore," the boy who is now 15-years-old told the court.
He was led in evidence by Mr. Thomas Hughes, his counsel.
The suit, filed on behalf of the boy by his mother, Gladys Darko, cites the governing board of the hospital as well as Dr. Kennedy Addo, Dr. Korpisah and Dr. Agbeko, all of the hospital, for a "wrongful operation" conducted on his leg on September 13, last year.
He is asking for ¢800 million in damages.
The doctors, according to the suit, operated on the boy’s left knee instead of the right, after he had been diagnosed with "a torn patella ligament."
The writ further claimed that the boy’s father suffered a cardiac arrest and died as a result of the doctors’ negligence.
He told the court that he sustained the injury sometime in May, 2005 in a juvenile football league match between his team, Boca Juniors and Raskid Football Club and it took his parents two weeks to take him to hospital because there was no money.
When he was eventually taken to hospital "we were told that a surgery would be performed on my right knee and my parents were made to buy materials for Plaster of Paris (POP) and I also went for an x-ray examination."
He said he went for a medical review before the surgery and after the surgery had been performed "I realised that the doctors had operated on my left knee instead of right.
"I informed the nurses that the doctors have operated on the wrong knee. My mother then took the matter up from there."
During cross examination by Mr. Emmanuel Ohene, counsel for the defendants, the boy denied that he went in for herbal treatment before visiting the hospital.
He said he had the medical folder with him which he sometimes read through.
He said he could not complete the physiotherapy programmes at the hospital because there was no money after his father’s death and added that he did not tell the doctors of the family’s financial predicament.
The boy tendered in evidence a video clip of the match in which he got injured, photographs and also showed the scars of the operations to the court.
He told the court that he had ceased going to the hospital because the authorities there had refused to attend to him since June 12 and he is currently undergoing treatment at a hospital at Osu, Accra.
Further hearing was adjourned to November 15.
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