Neurosurgeon Hadi Mohammed Abdallah says Ghana continues to repeat the same national mistakes in handling tragedies.

He drew a direct line between the death of engineer Charles Amissah and past national disasters such as May 9.

Speaking on Joy News’ PM Express on Wednesday, he said he was “not surprised” by the findings of the committee investigating Amissah’s death, but described the outcome as “sad” and “alarming.”

The government-appointed committee found that 29-year-old Amissah died from medical neglect and denial of emergency care after being turned away by three major hospitals in Accra, a conclusion the neurosurgeon said reflects a deeper systemic problem.

“To be honest, I wasn’t surprised… I was also sad, and I was alarmed that after so many years, because about seven to eight years ago, we had a similar incident involving an elderly person,” he said.

He said Ghana tends to react emotionally to national tragedies but fails to implement lasting reforms.

“In certain countries, when events like this happen, be it in healthcare or in education, it leads to significant changes in terms of policy, even the law. But for us, it’s always trying to find fault,” he stated.

According to him, responsibility is often personalised rather than addressed at the institutional level.

“And the fault is always personalised. We don’t look at how to solve the problem,” he said.

Dr Hadi drew a comparison with the May 9 disaster, recalling his personal experience and the national response that followed.

“I quite remember when it happened, there was hue and cry about the police officers, how unprofessional they were,” he said.

“Nobody looked at the system that trained them and what was there for them to control the crowd at the time.”

He said the aftermath of that disaster followed a familiar pattern of blame rather than reform.

“At the end of it, the police officers were scapegoats. We sent them to court. Eventually, they could not establish a case against them,” he noted.

For him, both the Amissah case and past tragedies point to the same national failure: a cycle of outrage without structural change.