Kintampo accident: MT honours promise
Metro Mass Transit (MMT) has honoured its pledge to cater for the medical bills of victims of the Kintampo accident.
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A team, led by the Board Chairman of the company, Mr Leslie Tamakloe, visited three hospitals: the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) in Kumasi, the Sunyani Regional Hospital and the Techiman Hospital to visit the injured.
The team was also in Bolgatanga to commiserate with the families of the victims of the accident which claimed more than 60 lives.
At KATH, the team thanked the doctors for helping to save the lives of the victims and to ascertain the level of injuries suffered by the passengers.
Nine victims were sent to KATH. One of them was brought in dead. Two of the surviving victims have since been discharged, while six are still on admission.
Injured
At the time of the visit, Kwame Ayass, 28, a native of Bolgatanga who suffered laceration of the leg, head and torsion of the shoulder, was ready to be discharged.
Most of the other injured on admission would have to go through surgeries to correct the defects they suffered.
One of the seriously injured, Adongo Yaaba, 23, had his spinal cord damaged.
According to Dr Vincent Attivor, the orthopaedic surgeon who attended to him, “the bone protecting the spinal cord has been broken and we need to correct it to release the pressure on it and hope that the spinal cord will still be intact.
“With surgery and physiotherapy he may be able to regain the use of the legs but as it is now, he has become numb and cannot feel anything,” he said.
He said the hospital would have loved to keep some of the injured at the facility to observe them for a while before discharging them “but for lack of space, we have to discharge them once they have regained consciousness and are not in life threatening conditions.”
Board Chairman
The Board Chairman of MMT, Mr Tamakloe, sympathised with the injured and expressed the company’s readiness to foot all their medical bills until they were fit.
He said the accident had shaken the board and management of the company and added that although the company had always endeavoured to be one of the safest of the public transport in the country by ensuring that its drivers were well trained and the buses in good conditions, “at times, we can’t avoid this.”
He stated that the company would go the extra mile to ensure that some of those things were averted in future.
“That notwithstanding,” he said, “we can always be cautious and ensure that our buses are always in good condition.”
MD
The Managing Director of the company, Pastor Al-Hassan Ligbi, also commended the doctors and supporting staff of the hospital for working tirelessly to save the lives of the injured.
He said the accident had really affected the morale of the staff and management of the company but was hopeful that they would soon pick up the pieces.
On behalf of the company, he presented a cash donation of GH¢1,000.00 to each of the injured at the hospital.
The cash was for their upkeep while the company would foot all their medical bills.
The board and management of the company would also visit the injured in other health facilities where similar donations would be made. They would later visit the families of those who perished and commiserate with them.
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Background
Last Wednesday, a Bolga bound MMT bus collided with a truck loaded with tomatoes at Kintampo, leaving 61 passengers dead and 25 others sustaining various degrees of injury.