Dr. Dominic Kwame Obeng-Andoh
Dr. Dominic Kwame Obeng-Andoh, the director of a private medical centre in Accra – Obengfo Hospital, who was recently arrested following the unfortunate death of a patient at his facility, has broken his silence.
He is insisting that he is not a ‘murderer’ as being portrayed particularly in the media and said he had been cooperating fully with investigations into the circumstances leading to the death of Stacy Offei Darko, Deputy CEO of National Entrepreneurship Innovative Plan (NEIP) in May this year.
According to court documents submitted by the police, the deceased reported at the private medical facility in May for liposuction and fat transfer surgery but passed on.
He was then arrested as a result of the sad incident which generated heated public debate over whether a medical doctor in the course of performing his duties can be charged for the murder of a patient.
The embattled medical practitioner is currently before an Accra Magistrate Court charged with murder and the duplicate case docket has already been forwarded to the Attorney General’s Department for advice.
Dr. Obeng-Andoh remained in police custody for almost three months and was at a point on admission at a hospital after he was taken ill.
Subsequently, Dr. Obeng-Andoh was on July 27, 2018, granted bail by the Accra High Court presided over by Justice Kofi Dorgu in the sum of GH¢100,000.00 with two sureties, one of whom must be justified but had to remain in custody because of the strict bail conditions.
He later successfully executed his bail terms and has since appeared in court for his committal proceedings.
In an exclusive interview with DAILY GUIDE on Monday, Dr. Obeng-Andoh said “a lot of public misconceptions have been created and wild allegations have been put out there since this incident but I would like to assure the public that I am not a murderer.”
“People said many things about me especially in the media. Those I have even never encountered in life maligned me but I decided to remain silent because I believe that the state institutions mandated to investigate such issues are doing their job and there is no need to disrupt what they need to do,” he added.
He continued: “I have always been working as a professional medical doctor and have no intention to harm anybody. I am confident that at the end of everything the truth will come out. When the issue came up, they said I had gone ahead to embalm the body which is palpably false. They said we kept the body at our facility for four days which is also not true.
“The patient had come to us in the company of another person and that was the emergency contact we had. We tried our best to reach that person during the crisis but we were unsuccessful. The person who brought her did not also follow up. It was after about four days that the said individual got back to us.”
Dr. Obeng-Andoh further said that “we did not move the body to different mortuaries as being pushed. We sent it straight to a storage facility at Buduburam near Kasoa and there was a referral letter that asked for possible autopsy.”
He disclosed: “In fact, I drove to the police station when they invited me,” adding “when the police came to my facility we released every document concerning the case to them.”
By William Yaw Owusu