A former Minister for Gender, Children, and Social Protection, Otiko Djaba, has said there is a need for increased training in the social welfare department and for hospital administration staff in Ghana.

According to her, being a doctor does not automatically equip someone to handle administrative roles.

This comes after a patient of the Winneba Trauma Hospital was allegedly dumped in the bush at Gomoa Ojobi in the Central Region.

Multiple reports indicate that the patient had been hospitalised at the facility for some time after an accident.

Aside from having two broken legs, she had allegedly suffered from some mental illness as a result of the accident. However, unlike other victims, her family failed to show up to care for her. Speaking on the floor of Parliament on Friday, June 14, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa condemned the act and insisted that all stakeholders involved be urgently summoned to address the issue.
"It has been reported that doctors and nurses at the Winneba government just threw out a patient who had an accident because they couldn’t locate her family.”

Speaking on the JoyNews AM show, the former Minister for Gender, Children, and Social Protection, Otiko Djaba, said,” It is important that the whole medical sector be retrained. I would ask that the association put some funds into that and the Ghana Health Service as well. The social welfare itself, apart from the training, also needs resources in terms of vehicles and laptops, and what have you and their involvement because every hospital has a social welfare officer at the hospital”.

She emphasised that the involvement of the social welfare officer is crucial to preventing such unfortunate situations from recurring.

Mrs Djaba described the act as highly irresponsible and insisted that it must not be repeated.

“If you look at the oath that they swear, it talks about sympathy, so where was the sympathy of these people? We do not go to the hospital as if it were a beach; you go there because you are in need, you are ill, or a loved one or a friend is not well. It is incumbent on the system to protect everybody who goes there and is not well” she noted.