Five
months after initiating legal action against the Madina Polyclinic and four
others over the death of his expectant wife and unborn baby, the case is yet to
progress beyond the filing of defence by the Attorney General.
Though
the Attorney General (AG) filed a defence statement on behalf of all four
defendants including the Polyclinic, Ministry of Health MoH) and the Ghana
Health Service (GHS) as far back as Thursday March 3, 2016, it was not until
Bernard Otu, the plaintiff walked into the registry on Thursday July 7, 2016 that
he was given the defense statement after five months of initiating the action.
According
to legal experts, the statement ideally was supposed to have been served the counsel
for plaintiff and or his client immediately it was filed, but this was not the
case, and no official reason has been assigned for the apparent delay.
Follow up
On
Friday June 24, 2016, The Mirror which broke the story wrote in a letter to the
Registrar of the Human Rights High Court, enquiring about the status of the
case.
In
response, the Registrar of the court, Mr. Stephen Afotey confirmed (in a letter
dated July 5, 2016) that the defense statement was filed five months ago.
“A
search conducted in the registry indicates that on the 3rd day of
March 2016, the Attorney General filed statement of defence for all the
defendants herein”, part of the one paged letter of response read. The letter,
however, fell short of explaining why the document was still gathering dust at
the registry.
It
cost the Mirror GHC 50 to get the response, which the court registry said was
because the newspaper was not party to the case.
Plaintiff’s demand for the statement
 |
| The plaintiff, Mr. Bernard Otu displaying the statement of defence |
On
Friday July 8, 2016, Mr Otu, the plaintiff made a personal appearance at the
Court’s registry to enquire about and demand a copy of the statement. It was
only then that he was handed a copy, which he later delivered to his counsel,
Francis Xavier Sosu Esq. of the F-X Law and Associates.
Interview with Counsel
When
asked if the action and or inaction of the court (registry) was delaying the
process, Mr. Sosu answered in the affirmative. “Those Clerks are derailing the
course of justice for the poor man”, he stressed and added that “the statement
should have been served the plaintiff as soon as it was filed”.
The way forward
As
counsel for plaintiff, Mr Sosu said he was going to file a reply to the
statement of defence by Monday July 18, 2016 and would additionally file for direction
of the Court which will help set the issues down for trial possibly after the
legal vacation which runs from July 31 to October 2016.
Background to the story
Eight
months after the death of the pregnant wife, the widower, Mr. Otu initiated a
GHC 5 million suit against the Polyclinic and three others- GHS, MoH and the
AG- for what he considers an act of “medical malpractice” which caused the
untimely death of his 38-year-old wife, Cynthia Nuworsu and their unborn baby
girl.
Cynthia,
a trader by profession was off to give birth to her fifth child when she died
of a ruptured uterus and breeched presentation, as confirmed by an autopsy
report from the Police Hospital.
She
died around midday on June 18, 2016 following an induction of labour the day
before.
Characteristic
of him, Francis Xavier Sosu, a Human Rights and Public Interest Lawyer took up
the case on behalf of the widower in a determined effort to win the latter a
compensation package and to ultimately cause a change in the supervision and
overall improvement in the health delivery systems.
The
case is presently before the Human Rights division of the High Court in Accra.
.
