As doctors and nurses at Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital return to work from a week-long strike, many critically-ill patients who were denied healthcare during the period have painful stories to tell.

While some families mourn the loss of their loved ones, survivors speak of how life-threatening the strike had been.

A thirty-six year old mother of four, who wants to remain anonymous, escaped death narrowly after enduring the pain of carrying a dead baby in her womb for over 24-hours.

The poor expectant mother had reported at the Komfo Anokye Hospital the same day some Zongo youth attacked doctors and nurses at the facility.

She was forced, though in pain, to return to Obuasi to be delivered there.  

Worse still, she was referred again to the Komfo Anokye Hospital, at a time the doctors and nurses there had withdrawn their services.

In labour, the woman had to quickly rush to a private health facility in a near unconscious state.

Interestingly, the overwhelmed private hospital in Kumasi had to call for assistance from a striking specialist – gynaecologist - at Komfo Anokye to the rescue of the pregnant woman on Wednesday.

Doctors described the woman as ‘extraordinary patient’ because of her complex condition.

She had previously had deliveries through caesarean section with multiple repairs of incisional hernia from two surgeries. With a developed scar, the woman has a mesh implanted to protect her abdominal organs.

With a ruptured uterus after the womb had busted, the baby forced its way out into a pool of blood in the abdomen.

Obstetrician gynaecologist, Dr. Ernest Kwarko, describes how the woman survived.

“She wasn’t an ordinary patient and two effects combined; previous caesarean section with a previous scar, on the uterus and as breech presentation, she was not supposed to allow delivering vaginally.

“And because of the up-and-down and the strike action, when she got here she had already ruptured and blood was leaking into her abdomen. Her vitals were down and we have to quickly resuscitate her to life before we operate.

“Though we have skills and knowledge that we used to help her, it was God because she could have easily died”

Speaking to Nhyira FM on her hospital bed, the traumatized woman said she owes her life to the medical team.

Though she lost what would have been her fifth child, the fragile woman says she is content with her life.