For about 3 months we were caring for my husband's youngest brother. He had chronic Hepatitis B and despite the best efforts of my husband, and his own will to live, he sadly passed away on 17th February.
It is only when something like this happens you realise how 'third world' this place really is.
My husband realised that his brother had deteriorated during the night when he went into his room in the morning and realised that he needed to get to hospital. In the UK it would have meant a phone call to the ambulance service and his brother would have been sent speedily to the hospital, but here there is no such service, and even if there was, the time it would take to navigate the rush hour traffic would have meant it arrived too late!
This meant my husband had to drive him - through the same traffic- to the hospital himself. He says he knew his brother had died even before he reached the main road so he was driving the corpse of his brother to the hospital - a traumatic event in itself.
When he reached the hospital the doctor pronounced him dead and as that particular clinic didn't have a mortuary, my husband had to drive round Accra with the body looking for a mortuary to receive him. Fortunately the extended family rallied round and were there to support him and help him to find a suitable place.
As his brother was a Muslim, it was necessary to get a death certificate so that he could be buried that day. This was another problem as there was supposedly the need for a post mortem as he hadn't died in hospital. Fortunately when my husband produced all the medical reports they supported the fact that he had been seriously ill and after a paper chase around Accra, the body was finally buried that evening.
So you can see, illness and death take on different proportions when there isn't the health service, emergency services and a bureacratic system that works efficiently!
