Doctor saves girl at Independence Day celebration
ELEVEN years after a 14-year-old pupil Etornam Gorni Attipoe collapsed and died during an Independence Day march past rehearsal at the Ho Jubilee Park, a similar incident nearly occurred again at this year’s celebration at the Volta Regional Youth Resource Centre at Adaklu-Tsrefe,near Ho.
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This time, a 15-year-old girl who was watching the event from a popular stand, around 1pm suddenly fell unconscious under the sweltering sun.
A member of the medical team at the venue, Dr Emmanuel Amaglo, was the hero who quickly picked up the girl from the stand, carried her to the medical shed and revived the breathless girl after a marathon 30-minute cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).
CPR is an emergency procedure consisting of chest compressions often combined with artificial ventilation in an effort to manually preserve intact brain function until further measures are taken to restore spontaneous blood circulation and breathing in a person who is in a state of cardiac arrest.
Discharged
After she was revived, the weak and pale girl was rushed to the Ho Teaching Hospital where she was treated and later discharged.
Briefing the Daily Graphic, Dr Amaglo said the girl lost a lot of blood from the menstrual flow, and she was severely dehydrated due to the sizzling weather.
The girl whose name is being withheld was only identified later as a student of a second cycle institution in the Ho Municipality.
According Dr Amaglo, the girl turned up at the venue very early in the morning “probably without breakfast”.
Apart from the medical teams from Accra and Ho who were deployed at the 66th Independence Day celebration at Adaklu-Tsrefe, teams from the Red Cross and National
Ambulance Service readily offered first aid to the scores of spectators and personnel of the security agencies who fainted during the celebration.
Days prior to the celebration, a soldier who fell from one of the moving military vehicles during a rehearsal at the Regional Youth Resource Centre was sent to the 37 Military Hospital in Accra for treatment.
2012 event
On February 27, 2012, Etornam Gorni Attipoe of the SDA Basic School in Ho, who was marching with her colleagues at a rehearsal before the March 6, collapsed metres away from the dais.
She was rushed to the hospital where she was pronounced dead.
Last year, which marked 10 years of the incident, the Independence Day celebration at the Ho Jubilee Park took place on a highly emotional note as it was held purposely in remembrance of the late Etornam Gorni Attipoe.
The Regional Minister, Dr Archibald Yao Letsa, later cut the sod for the construction of a monument in honour of the girl.
