Prof. Akosah expresses disgust about how bodies of Goil fire were handled

daniel russell

June 9, 2015 5:11 PM

A former Director General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Professor Agyeman Badu Akosah says the manner in which the bodies of those who died in the fire at the Goil fuel station at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle were transported to the morgue was unprofessional.

Last Wednesday’s flood and inferno disaster resulted in the death of many Ghanaians whose bodies were transported to the morgue in trucks without covering them. According to Prof. Akosah, the bodies would have been wrapped in body bags in other jurisdictions instead of putting them in trucks.

“Anywhere else, all the bodies would have been put in body bags and the body bags would have been appropriately transported to the morgue… very distressed the way their bodies were just hurled into the bucket of the pick-ups”, he said on Citi FM.

Prof. Akosah added that it did not, “in any way dignify the human beings who had lost their lives under such tragic circumstances. I think as a country, we can do better than that. The first thing I would have thought that the morgues will do will be that if they do not have a cold room, they will embalm the bodies.

“This is almost like a certificate of urgency so what you need to do is to preserve the each body in as near the state in which it was brought to the morgue as possible even before relations are brought in to identify the bodies.”

Over 200 people lost their lives while properties running into millions of cedis got destroyed by the torrential rains that fell for over three hours.

Some people had gathered in front of a Pharmacy Shop at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle near the Goil Filling Station adjacent to the GBC Towers to seek for refuge from the heavy downpour but unfortunately lost their lives following a fire outbreak at the Goil filling station.

daniel russell