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Takoradi Highway Accident: ‘There was no ambulance; victims were carried in pickup truck’ – Eyewitness narrates

An eyewitness has given a chilling account of the poor first-aid treatment given to victims of the recent Cape Coast-Takoradi Highway accident.

Takoradi Highway Accident: ‘There was no ambulance; victims were carried in pickup truck’ – Eyewitness narrates

A Medical Officer at the Emergency Department of the Cape Coast Teaching Hospital, where the surviving victims were admitted, has revealed that none of the victims were brought to the hospital in an ambulance.

“There was no ambulance, the patients were brought to the hospital in a pickup,” the Medical Officer told Pulse.com.gh on condition of anonymity.

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“I was at the hospital at around 1:30am and left around 12pm the next afternoon. All the patients that I saw were conveyed to the hospital in a pickup. And it was the same pickup.

“The same car went and came back about six times with victims of the accident. A colleague of mine also said he saw some of the victims being brought in an aboboyaa.”

The Medical Officer lamented the absence of ambulances at the accident scene as well as the poor way the victims were handled.

In the Medical Officer’s view, many more of the victims would have survived had they been given proper care after the accident.

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“Most of the people that attended to the patients are not professionals. An ambulance is well-equipped and the personnel are also well-trained. They would have known how best to handle the victims who survived the wreckage.”

The gory accident claimed 34 lives while several other victims sustained various degrees of injury.

The sad incident happened in the early hours of Tuesday, January 13, 2020 at around 12:15 am when two Yutong buses collided head-on near the Komenda Junction.

Twenty-nine (29) people died on the spot while five others later died at the Cape Coast Teaching Hospital, including two children.

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Email: eyewitness@pulse.com.gh

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