Advocacy group, “Patient Rights Watch” launched in Accra

Founder and President of Patient Rights Watch, Isaac Ofori Gyeabour, Esq., has urged Ghanaians to try existing laws on patient supportive rights.

Addressing the media on Wednesday during the launch of his organisation, he revealed that his passion was ignited to start his foundation when he observed during his Masters of Law studies that there are a number of laws that promote the cause of patients.

According to him, he established Patient Rights Watch to help patients who often don’t use existing laws to demand compensation or accountability from healthcare providers.

“There are several good laws that are supportive of patients’ rights and that they can use to demand accountability from healthcare workers whose negligence leads to lots of needless deaths and sometimes further worsens their already existing health crisis,” he said.

He said a patient can be any body and not some special group of people in a hospital, and therefore called on all Ghanaians to rally behind the foundation to know their rights as patients so that those rights cannot be trampled upon by health service providers.

If you cast your mind wide, you don’t see any patients, but “patients” can be you and me. A patient is not the next person. It’s about us, so it is very important that we get an organisation that becomes a voice for the people. So simply put, Patient Rights Watch is a voice for the people,” he asserted.

Lawyer Gyeabour disclosed that the foundation is anchored on three things, namely education, psychological support, and policy advocacy.

On education, he said the organisation aims to educate the public on their healthcare rights in Ghana, ensuring practitioners understand their responsibilities and patients’ rights, and reducing concerns about healthcare delivery.

Regarding psychological support, he stated that the organisation also helps victims whose rights as patients have been violated by providing them with psychological support.

As a third objective, Lawyer Gyeabour said that Patient Rights Watch will play a cardinal role in contributing to the policies of the government in relation to health care delivery in such a manner that patients’ rights will be upheld.

“So our aims are basically three things: the first is to make sure that we educate the Ghanaian public about the laws that are supportive of patients’ rights; the second is to provide victim support; and the third is to change policy in favour of the patient, so these are what we have set up ourselves to do.”