30 Buipe-Tamale road crash victims discharged

Thirty persons who got injured in the accident that occurred at Mile 40 (Sarekyekura) near Fulfulso on the Buipe-Tamale highway, in the Central Gonja District of the Savannah Region, last Wednesday, have been treated and discharged from the various health institutions they were sent to for treatment.

Of the 32 who were sent to the Buipe Polyclinic and the Holistic Medicare Hospital, 25 were discharged while five out of the 20 sent to the Tamale Teaching Hospital (TTH) were discharged yesterday, a day after the fatal accident.

The acting Public Relations Officer at the TTH, Mr Misboa Mohammed, told the Daily Graphic that there were 15 injured people still on admission, with four of them in critical condition while 11 with minor injuries were in stable condition.

The injured persons were among 102 people involved in the accident which resulted in the death of 19 others.

The accident, which occurred in the early hours of last Wednesday, was as a result of a head-on collision between two buses (with registration numbers GT 3345-16 and AC 1699-20), that were travelling from Kumasi to Zebila and from Garu to Kumasi respectively.

Deceased

Yesterday, some family members of the victims in the accident began arriving at the TTH to either meet up with the injured or identify those who perished.

Mr Mohammed said 17 out of the 19 dead bodies deposited at the TTH mortuary had been identified and 16 of them had been claimed by their relatives.

The remaining body was yet to be identified and claimed .

Among the dead that were brought to the TTH were 13 males including the drivers of the two buses, four adult females and a female child.

The acting Public Relations Officer (PRO) for the Savannah Regional Police Command, Inspector Adjekum Owusu, also confirmed that the drivers of the two buses were among the deceased.

Inspector Owusu told the Daily Graphic that 47 persons got injured in the accident and were sent to various health facilities in Buipe and the TTH.

NRSA

Meanwhile, in an interview with the Daily Graphic, the Northern Regional Director of the National Road Safety Authority (NRSA), Mr Alexander Ayatah, has called for a full-scale investigation to establish the actual numbers of the dead and injured in the accident.

 He also called on long distance drivers to observe the mandatory one hour stop for rest in order to get themselves re-energised to continue their journey.

Mr Ayata added that because of the long distance that drivers on that stretch had to cover, they were always fatigued and that increased the risk of accidents.

He advised drivers who plied that stretch, therefore, to adhere to the one hour mandatory stop for rest to avoid getting involved in such fatal road crashes.