A damning investigation into the death of 29-year-old engineer Charles Amissah has concluded that his passing was not an inevitable consequence of a road accident, but rather a “slow death” brought about by systemic medical neglect and the chronic shortage of emergency beds in Ghana’s capital.
Amissah, an employee of Promasidor Ghana Limited, was knocked down in a hit-and-run incident near the Kwame Nkrumah Circle Overpass on February 6, 2026.
Although he survived the initial impact, a three-member investigative committee revealed that he spent the final two hours of his life in the back of an ambulance, being moved from one major health facility to another, only to be turned away at each stop.
The committee, chaired by Professor Agyeman Badu Akosa, reconstructed a harrowing 118-minute sequence of events that saw Amissah transported across the city while actively bleeding from what investigators described as a treatable arm injury. According to the report, the National Ambulance Service arrived at the accident scene at 10:32 p.m. Eleven minutes later, he was taken to the Police Hospital, where he was not stabilised. At 10:58 p.m., he arrived at the Greater Accra Regional Hospital, popularly known as Ridge Hospital, but was again denied admission. By 11:20 p.m., he had been transferred to the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital. At 12:30 a.m., he was pronounced dead following a final unsuccessful attempt to secure a transfer to the University of Ghana Medical Centre (UGMC).
“In all, this patient was alive,” Prof. Akosa noted, stressing that the engineer survived the journey to every single facility he was taken to, but received no life-saving intervention.
The committee’s findings have shifted attention away from the hit-and-run driver and toward the institutions responsible for emergency care.
An autopsy conducted as part of the investigation confirmed that Amissah died from exsanguination, excessive blood loss, caused by soft tissue damage and a bone injury to his upper right arm.
“The pathology confirms a slow death from medical neglect and not from the instant trauma,” Prof. Akosa stated. “What it means is that if at any of these facilities there had been medical intervention, Charles Amissah could have survived.”
The report also exposed serious lapses in emergency response protocols, particularly at Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, where a final referral to UGMC was reportedly proposed but never carried through after the ambulance crew declined to continue the transfer.
