The former Chief Executive Officer of the University of Ghana Medical Centre (UGMC), Dr Darius Osei, has criticised the "pay-before-service" culture in Ghana’s emergency wards, labelling the practice of demanding money from trauma victims a death sentence.
Speaking during a high-profile JoyNews dialogue on Thursday, 2nd April 2026, Dr Osei argued that the current system, where Good Samaritans and grieving relatives are forced to navigate a gauntlet of billing points while a patient’s life hangs in the balance, is a fundamental betrayal of medical ethics.
Dr Darius Osei, has revealed how he watched helplessly as his niece died due to chronic gaps in the country's emergency care system
Dr Osei recounted the final moments of his niece, a university student, whose life was cut short despite being under supervision in one of Ghana’s top hospitals.
He described a chaotic four-hour ordeal in the emergency ward, where his medical expertise could not save his own relative, who had been rushed to a different hospital.
“I realised, and I lost a patient, that is my niece, who was in the university,” Dr Osei shared with a visible sense of grief. “I stood by her in the emergency; we spent four hours. I was sent to go to the lab to bring the bottle, and I brought it and then, you know, up and down. And so finally, I lost my niece.”
The former CEO’s account highlights a recurring nightmare for many Ghanaians, where the system requires relatives or others to act as errand runners for basic laboratory consumables while their loved ones are in critical condition.
The tragedy serves as a damning indictment of the current emergency protocols.
If a former CEO of a multi-million-dollar medical facility like UGMC was reduced to chasing lab bottles while his niece’s life ebbed away, it raises harrowing questions about the fate of ordinary citizens without such connections.
Source: Joynews
