Imposter arrested at KATH
A 32-year-old man has been arrested for allegedly diverting patients from the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) to private clinics outside the KATH.
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Kwame Fred Agbezuge, who has been in this business for the past 10 years, is alleged to be working with some doctors at the KATH who also operate clinics outside the teaching hospital.
With the latest development, the hospital has put in motion an investigative machinery to identify the doctors involved, investigate them for action to be taken, according to the Chief Executive of the KATH, Prof. Ohene Adjei.
Briefing the media, the Security Coordinator of the KATH, Mr Ernest Yomekpe, said the modus operandi of the suspect included approaching patients and their relatives, enquiring about their problems and, in the process, directing them to hospitals that would offer best quality services.
He said Agbezuge, who is currently in custody at the Ashanti Regional Police Headquarters, had always told his unsuspecting patients that the KATH did not have quality facilities and medical doctors.
The security coordinator said Agbezuge, who had links with some of the doctors, directed such unsuspecting patients and their relatives to the various private hospitals manned by doctors who worked full time at the KATH.
But his cover was blown last Tuesday when he approached one Mr Kofi Atta, from Accra, who had brought his father, Mr P. K. Nsiah, to the KATH for treatment.
Agbezuge is said to have told Mr Atta that he could offer them the best treatment at a clinic at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), with the explanation that the KATH did not provide quality health care.
Agbezuge promised that Mr Atta’s father would be given best health care by one doctor whose name he gave as Dr Turkson.
During the interaction, Mr Nsiah, who was surprised at the behaviour of Agbezuge, started querying the motive of the suspect, to the extent of exchanging words with him.
The security coordinator noted that Agbezuge’s suspicious behaviour had been under the eagle eyes of the hospital security, especially with reports that he had been diverting patients to other private hospitals.
The scene attracted the security at the KATH who came in and, upon interrogation, arrested Agbezuge and handed him over to the police.
According to Mr Yomekpe, it is through preliminary investigations at the hospital that some patients and nurses revealed that Agbezuge had been at the corridors of the teaching hospital almost every now and then.
Corroborating the arrest, the Chief Executive of the KATH, Prof. Ohene Adjei, explained that such attitudes of doctors from the KATH was affecting the hospital’s vision of providing quality health delivery to its patients.
He said it was unacceptable and criminal for doctors at the hospital to divert patients who had come to seek health care to their private clinics, and when their conditions got worse, they “bring them here to die”.