Head of Operations for the Ghana Ambulance Service, Foster Ansong Brigyan, has intimated that workers of the service do not have a personal insurance policy at the moment aside the one-off compensations they receive in case of incidents.
His comment comes on the back of the death of an ambulance driver who was also the Senior Emergency Medical Technician shot by highway robbers on the Somanya to Adukrom road while transporting a pregnant woman in labour.
He made this known while speaking in an interview on insurance measures or policies the welfare of the service has put in place for workers who encounter accidents.
He then indicated that, the vehicles are insured comprehensively, so when an ambulance faces challenges, it is the ambulance that insurance covers.
“So, the patients and the personnel who are working in the ambulance are the third parties. So, third party insurance too we have a limit for it and there is a limit to their insurance covers that is what the service can actually pay.
“What we do as a service is that, our personnel are also under the workman compensation, that is if they are in the line of duty or the nurse themselves and it happens that they go through any form of situation like what has happened, we quickly go to the labour office and get the workman compensation for and based on that, they are compensated adequately.”
He further stated that, his outfit has gone for the forms from the hospital, from those who attended to the driver to complete it for them to hand it over to the to the labour office, where the details will be given and afterwards, a compensation will be paid to the family of the driver.
Mr Brigyan further said that they have put it before the Ministry of Health to insure all the workers and the risk involved in the work. He averred that, they are hoping that with this incident in mind, something will be done about it to ensure that, personnel who have put themselves in this kind of duty and all the risk involved will be adequately insured with some personal insurance schemes to ensure that in case of any unfortunate incident they will adequately be compensated.
Speaking on his initial reaction to the news of the shooting of the Senior Emergency Medical Technician, he disclosed that they were shocked since such an accident has never happened before.
“It was something we were all not ready to accept because we thought that it was untrue until we got to Korle Bu to see him unconscious.
The Senior Emergency Medical Technician, Abraham Tetteh died at Korle Bu Teaching Hospital after an armed group of robbers attacked a vehicle he was driving which is reported to have been transporting a pregnant woman from Adukrom in the Eastern Region.
The highway robbers attacked the ambulance vehicle and shot the driver in the head and sexually harassed the paramedic who was on board. The late Abraham Tetteh was also the Yilo Krobo municipal officer in charge of the National Ambulance Service.
