Ghana is investigating how a retired disease control officer injected at least 15 people out of which 4 are already dead
The quality of services offered to patients at primary healthcare centers has gotten under the magnifying glass following the shocking revelation in Ghana of the death of at least 4 individuals that received contaminated and expired Benzathine penicillin injection at a popular primary healthcare center referred to as the New Senchi Health Centre located in Ghana’s Eastern Region.
Joy FM reported that the fatal injections were administered by James Yeboah, a retired disease control officer to between 15 to 20 people. Health authorities also revealed that Yeboah had been operating a private clinic at the facility.
According to reports, Yeboah improvised the poisonous injections that he subsequently administered to individuals that visited the facility to seek treatment for their skin infections. The dead victims include a 31-year-old man, a 42-year-old woman and a 78-year-old man.
It has also been revealed the Asuogyaman District and the Eastern Regional Health authorities were unaware of Yeboah’s work description at the facility although he got the nods of some persons at the center.
Ghana FDA’s preliminary report confirmed the deaths were due to contaminated medication, adding that victims suffered adverse reactions described as injection site abscess, skin necrosis and ulcers leading to the deaths.
“Preliminary investigations revealed that these reactions may be due to contaminated 0.9% Normal Saline, the solution which was used to reconstitute (mix) the Benzathine Penicillin Powder for Injection. The 0.9% Normal Saline Solution was reported to have been opened and used repeatedly for several days which might have resulted in the contamination,” a statement from the FDA explained.
Taking it further, Ghana Health Service (GHS) said Yeboah, had not been authorised to offer such healthcare, and has been ordered to stop practising.
“Indeed, he [James Yeboah] has been stopped from practising as he was not authorised by the Ghana Health Service at the national, regional or district [level] to conduct this activity in the facility. So he has been stopped from practising in that facility to make sure that he doesn’t put other people at risk,” Dr. Badu Sarkodie, Director of Public Health at the Ghana Health Service, said.
Prior to their death, some of the victims were taken to the VRA Hospital when side effects of the injection began to manifest – a situation that Dr. Seth Fiadoyor, Medical Superintendent at the VRA Hospital, said were difficult to manage.
“These were very devastating destruction of tissues. Large areas necrotic with what we thought were both fungal microbial mixed infections. We tried a lot to put them on multiple wide-range antibiotics and supportive treatment but unfortunately out of the three, we lost two,” Dr Fiadoyor recounted.
He added that the rotten body tissues were also resistant to treatment, a claim that was confirmed by close relatives of the victims who said the parts of the body where the injections were administered began to rot.
The health authorities have called on individuals that received injections at the health center to come forward for assistance even as the police has commenced criminal investigations that had resulted in the arrest of Yeboah and manager of the facility, Simon Takeramah, who has since been granted bail.
Furthermore, samples from the deceased had also been sent to the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research for further investigations.
While relatives of the victims are asking for justice, investigators had raised alarm regarding evidence tampering even as the FDA claims that the Yeboah may not be prosecuted.
George Sabblah, a pharmacist at the Pharmacovigilance Department of the FDA, said on TV that if “investigations reveal that it is an error, we will look at what caused this error, then we try to prevent it from [recurring] in the future.”
He explains further: “Medication errors may be due to health care professional factor. Assuming a health care professional is supposed to give drug ‘A’ [but] ended up giving drug ‘B’, that is a medication error and this error may be due to the fact that the two drugs are looking very similar.”